Cydylo's work is even less innovative. She seeks, as she says in her artist's statement, "specific allusions to Victorian constraint and more generalized, surreal indications of social interaction," which translates, it seems, to lots of cut-out dresses in black and white stuck on walls. Cheap Mattisse cut-out imitations, maybe, but little more.

As for photography, we get more of the sorts of images of girls growing up too fast and women wizened too young that already saturate the art world. This didn't stop the curators from including Jocelyn Lee's work. The standard little girl wearing make-up, complete with dyed hair and a bikini, is by now tired and almost traditional. Lee presents nothing new; in fact, her contorted fruit photographs aren't even grotesque, but simply run-of-the-mill. She wishes for a contorted crab apple to signify the state of humanity in the modern world, beauty destroyed by convention and expectation. Such a perspective, unfortunately, has been taken a few too many times already, and Lee adds nothing to this overplayed theme.

There is a glimmer of hope in the form of Level Best, a sort of white plastic sculpting material which is Amy Podmore's favorite medium. Her sculpture is about the only thing zany and creative in Boston art, if we are to believe that the exhibit is truly representative. Podmore doesn't need to rely on long-winded mission statements to connect with her viewers. A sculpture reminiscent of Wallace and Gromit's The Wrong Trousers actually works as a statement about childhood, with two pairs of trousers, one big and one small, attached precariously by yarn.

Similarly, Podmore even manages to breathe some new life into the old complaint of postmodern isolation. She takes a teddy bear that has only eyes and ears, sews room for Level Best human arms and legs and sticks this figure on a branch of a birch tree set in a line of darker trees. The result is a poignant, even wrenching, display of innocence alone in a cold environment. Podmore's work doesn't actively attempt to be theoretical and, as a result, is not overbearing like everything else in the exhibit.

Though how these artists were chosen is quite clear, thanks to the beauty of an annual art show's bureaucracy, the reason why these artists were chosen is obscure. Besides Podmore, no artist featured shows any sort of creative innovation. If the exhibit is meant to further discussion of feminist theory, that could be done just as easily with a new book-and the Rose's wonderful museum space could be freed up for something that stands on its own as challenging and interesting.

The Lois Foster Exhibition of Boston Area Artists is on view at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, through Dec. 17. For more information, call 781-736-3434.