Look twice - the art isn't always on the wall Jim Lee's painted constructions at Gershman Y.

Been to the Gershman Y lately? If so, you may have noticed that its Open Lens Gallery has been temporarily transformed into University of the Arts exhibition space, the result of an arrangement between the Gershman and the university, which owns the building, that has both entities alternating programming in the lobby from now on.

What you can't help noticing is that there are no photographs on the walls, as there are when the space is the Open Lens; instead, there are paintings, or, more properly, painted constructions, in places you would never expect to find them.

I walked past Jim Lee's unassuming floor piece, a tentlike construction of battleship gray-painted canvas over a wood armature, without even seeing it, probably thinking it was something a janitor had left behind. When I suddenly recognized it as an artwork, it came into focus as a surprisingly sophisticated piece, with a cut slit for an opening that reminded me of Lucio Fontana's "slash" paintings of the late 1950s.

I might not have noticed a piece mounted above a door, a small rectangle of pink carpet painted with purple stripes, either, but I knew by then to keep my eyes peeled.

Even the largest of Lee's works - a partly stretched work of canvas drop cloth and blue plastic tarpaulin propped against a wall - could be missed by someone expecting paintings on walls. (There is a precedent for this canvas-with-a-life-of-its-own in the work of James Hyde, but Lee has made his looming piece even more casual than any of Hyde's.)

Lee's deft use of everyday materials stands out most clearly in Niblick, a lovable birdhouse-size construction (hung on a wall at eye level) of found wood and plastic painted with shiny blue enamel and held together with wire. It looks like something that was simply meant to be.

University of the Arts, Gershman Hall, 401 S. Broad St., 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Sundays. 215-717-6480 or www.uarts.edu, through Feb. 26.

Sky high

Also in the Gershman building is the Borowsky Gallery's group exhibition "Clouds," which gathers meditations on clouds by nine artists in paintings, photographs, works on paper and silk, and on video.

Some of the more surprising works here include Elsab Dixon's hanging cloud-like balls of silk, composed of the cocooning efforts of silkworms; Nancy Hellebrand's color photographs of sunset-hued clouds over Florida's Gulf Coast; Harry Kalish's black-and-white shots of high cloud banks; and John J.H. Phillips' video of a cloud forming and reforming.