In sculptor's hands, prosaic plywood becomes elegant art

The artist's fascination with surfaces draws you close, but the brawny, almost violent quality of their making may push you back. He went at ''Double Loop" with a circular cutting tool and a more delicate gouge. The circles, carved out of an undulating wave across the center, have an oddly earthy effervescence. Above and below, he streaks the wood with vertical cuts, tearing off the surface in slender strips: It looks like a downpour.

In the more recent work, Kon has been making his sculptures waffle and float delightfully off the wall. ''Flextuation" folds in and out, accordion-style, with its long vertical slats carved, gouged, and painted roughly in red and black.

Many of his pieces seem to try to solve geometry problems: Angles, planes, and patterns fill them. But lately Kon has surrendered to structures that evoke smoke more than building blocks. ''Radioactive Timeless" hangs on brackets a foot out from the wall. It's a spindly, crisscrossing ribbon of plywood, dancing over and around itself like a tangled vine, in petal-like licks. He seared the wood to a velvety brown and edged it with sky blue.

Most of Kon's sculptures are insistently massive. This ethereal turn is a great step, introducing a fey insouciance into his ordinarily lumberjack sensibility.

'Playground' art Sharon Kaitz always anchors her abstract paintings in gestures that remind us of something else. ''The Heart's Playground," her new show at Allston Skirt, starts in the playground, with chalky scrawls on the blacktop: the hopscotch grid, circles, scratches. There's a muted, ''Lord of the Flies" quality to the playground: It's where kids socialize, bond, and conquer on a field of jungle gyms and jump ropes.