San Antonio Express But there is never a lack of control that those terms imply in the San Antonio designer/artist's work, exhibited through the end of November at the in Olmos Park. Peer a little more deeply into one of Walker Carrington's meticulously multilayered screen prints, with filigrees and slashing stripes and shard shapes in hyperventilating colors, and you'll discover a soul struggling to come to terms with the whole surface vs. substance dilemma - and ultimately deciding . . . to buy a new pair of shoes. "My work," she says, "is all about that big enigma of fashion and music and popular culture and media and beauty." At 39, Walker Carrington, who was raised in the Bay Area, is of that front-end digital generation, coming of age during the Me Decade and the Clinton years. (It's not a surprise - although it's awesomely cool - to learn that this lean and athletic woman with glowing blue eyes was one of that pesky initial wave of snowboarders and competed for about five years on the X-Games circuit in the mid-'90s. And, she says, perhaps seriously, the only thing keeping her from being a total ski bum still is two young kids and the lack of a trust fund.) Walker Carrington's background is in advertising and Web design, having worked as a graphic artist at every level in the ad business from freelance to boutique and big agencies for clients ranging from small hotels to Coors beer. Last year, she left Jill Giles Design, one of San Antonio most creative design shops, to go out on her own and devote more time to her art and her growing family. Working on a computer (and printing painstakingly by hand on canvas, with acrylics), Walker Carrington blurs lines between art and design. "I have always felt that design is art, and often is much cooler and more interesting than traditional media," she says. She acknowledges her art might be perceived as "glossy eye candy" at first glance, but "on a deeper level it addresses topics like materialism, superficiality and love." "One of my paintings doesn't cost nearly as much as a pair of shoes at Neiman's," Walker Carrington says. She offers an anecdote from her life in advertising in San Francisco in the early '00s: "I remember a time when I was really depressed, down in the dumps, things weren't going well. So I went to Saks and bought a pair of Prada shoes. I paid something like $350 for them, and it was worth every penny. In fact, it felt so good that I went back the next day and bought another pair. It felt even better." She hesitates. "I still have those shoes." In addition to pop and conceptual art ("I would absolutely kill for a Warhol"), rock music plays a key role in Walker Carrington's latest work; in fact, a perusal of titles reads like an iPod playlist: "Public Image," "Hopelessly Decadent," "Underneath It All," "Vanity Rules," "A Theory on Love" and, best of all, "Artificial Cherry." One could make the argument that a large work like "Awkward and Difficult" is a visual representation of pop music, say, a Police tune, with its classic rock, reggae and punk influences, playing through a pair of earpods. , who is, not incidentally, an icon in the fields of music, film, fashion and art, is "a major influence," says Walker Carrington, and she quotes Bowie lyrics on screened seat cushions that electrify refinished antique chairs. Walker Carrington transforms these flea-market finds into found sculpture that you can sit on - "If you buy one," she says. "I like the dichotomy of something really beautiful that looks a little defaced," she says. "I love graffiti art." A new work that encapsulates a common theme is "Happy Shallow Beautiful III," which literally quotes from metal band Living Colour's 1989 Grammy-winning song "Cult of Personality": "I Exploit You . . . Still You Love Me."