Dana depew's flags Put the money where the stars used to be.

Some art lovers go to places like Cleveland's Tremont district looking for a 1970s East Village, old-time Tompkins Square cultural buzz; they hope to encounter thrift-store punks with hyper-retro or neo-Dada-ish preoccupations, hanging salon-style and audible two blocks away.

Until now, those searchers have been amply rewarded, at least at the Doubting Thomas Gallery. For more than five years the place barely had walls. Three-and-a-half dingy rooms shambled haphazardly from the front door to the back of the building, displaying art that veered wildly from low comedy to high seriousness.

While all that isn't entirely a thing of the past, Doubting Thomas has cleaned up its act, adding drywall panels over much of the formerly exposed lathe, plus a coat of paint and decent lighting. This facelift was accomplished in recent weeks by the five artists who make up the current exhibit, New American Art. Curator and participant William ("Rob") Schwartz is the prime mover, and he's put together a show of notable works of art critical of American foreign policy and crass consumerism.

That means a lot of flag paintings. No doubt Jasper Johns made the most iconic images of our official national icon; and, of course, there have been a thousand others by as many artists, before and since Johns' first Flag, completed in 1955. But the guys at New American Art have plenty of their own versions.

In that department Dana Depew, who also happens to be director of Tremont's Asterisk Gallery, is easily the most prolific, and the most pointedly political. One set of 10 small paintings proposes new designs for Old Glory: Halliburton, McDonald's, Pfizer, Wal-Mart and six other mega-corporations finally have their logos right where the stars used to be. It can't be a good omen that these turn out to be more pleasing aesthetically than the original — or at least Wal-Mart does, with crisp navy lettering against tasty mint green. Or McDonald's, with golden arches like an angel's wings, and the M like Mountain's Majesty, or maybe Murder. But the BP banner is probably too convincing, looking very much like one of the many Commonwealth flags still flown by the former possessions of that former empire.

Another set of 10 paintings rendered in acrylic paint on stretched chenille fabric, also by Depew, depicts the "fruit salad" service ribbons worn to commemorate military tours of duty. In itself, the color-coding of war is a remarkable aesthetic concept if you think about it. The ribbons look like little abstract paintings, or maybe a paint manufacturer's color chart. Depew's selection and depiction, at 20 times actual size, painted on material that looks like tube socks, manages to achieve a genuine irony — valuable at a time when irony is as close to obsolescence as the despised Lincoln penny.

Curator William Schwartz displays some canny, highly sarcastic inventions of his own. His large acrylic on panel work, "Kiss My Ribbons," proposes 30 new additions to the catalogue of looped memorial ribbons that have proliferated on SUV bumpers over the past few years. Moving on from such frivolous concerns as AIDS and troop support, Schwartz gets to the marrow of our culture with ribbons that float, soup can-like, against a white ground. "LOL" proclaims one chat-room-savvy loop. "DARN TOOTIN'," declares another, and "GET A JOB HIPPIE." "BEER," understates a fourth. Viewers can think of their own personal propaganda or pet peeves, but Schwartz's mottos would make more sense than most emblazoned on the hind end of the family global-warming device.

Revisiting another trope of the pop era, Jim Karpinski's cartoon-based paintings have a more personal edge. They're also about politics, but from the human end, critiquing superhero-like hubris and violence in general. One work looks like a much enlarged faded page from a comic book, covered with stains and washes that evoke damage. A figure with a Hollywood face says, "I'm getting BIGGER and BIGGER Å  I'm NORMAL again, I'm a MAN again..." He concludes, "And now the first thing I must do is destroy." Another Karpinski work shows a man in a leisure suit firing a gun at his pursuer. A police car is seen in the near distance and the rest of the medium-size painting on panel is taken up with stylish swirls. They suggest movement and smoke, but also trivialize the action. Like decorative embellishments or even doodles, they emphasize the self-absorption of the era they remember, parsing its close resemblance to the present.

The remaining two artists in the exhibit share this 1960s aesthetic, using hardware-store materials and making reference to sign painting as an important phase in the history of American visual culture. Joseph Filak, for instance, creates a spray-painted image of an assault rifle framed by the repeated stenciled word "Pretty," while Stephe DK contributes what may be the most successful single painting on view. His small oil on canvas work uses the old Sherman Williams logo as its central motif, showing a can of paint pouring itself over our meridian-scored planet with the caption "Sherman Williams Covers the Earth." In this version the paint company's name has become USA.

It's witty and well-done, like almost everything in the show. But you wander back toward Professor Avenue wondering if there isn't some period of time other than the pop-punk epoch to access for a show of protest art. Leon Golub's huge works of deep ethical outrage commenting on American foreign policy evolved from a long consideration of European history and mythological painting. A less-familiar paradigm for political/generational dissonance might be useful to New American Art's artists as well, in their search for perspective on current domestic and international dilemmas.