The city's new arts landscape ranges from provocative displays that worry federal authorities to a ceramics exhibit that appeals to sophisticated collectors.

On the scrappy end of that spectrum - Bobo's on 9th, an exhibit and performance space near the Italian Market. It opened in the summer, the love child of a group of artists from California, New England and New Orleans, most of them recent graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design.

In the fall, they constructed a scene in the display window.

"It was an office," recalls Drew Gillespie, 25, one of Bobo's founders. "Next to the desk was a table with a copier that produced counterfeit bills. It looked like the room was filling up to the desk with the money."

Behind the desk was a chart showing profits skyrocketing. The currency, Gillespie says, was photocopied on only one side and obviously bogus.

"One day, a guy came up and said he was interested in buying it. We were supposed to meet up."

Instead, a troop of U.S. Secret Service agents visited Bobo's and confiscated the fake bills, Gillespie says.

"Luckily, they didn't charge us with anything," he says. "They just wanted to know our artistic intent."

The medium and message were much clearer to the crowd at last week's Second Thursday opening of Doug Herren's ceramics exhibit "Industria" at the 201 Gallery in the Crane Arts Building, just north of Northern Liberties.

Herren's sculptural pieces make abstract forms look like mysterious industrial objects. Rick Snyderman, one of the city's best-known art dealers and gallery owners, called them "top-notch."

Both the art and its display, Snyderman said, were "museum quality."

"I've asked the artist for a CD of his work," he said. "I'm going to send it to some of my clients."

Clients, he noted, who are used to spending lots of money on art.