The birth symbol is a design so...

The birth symbol is a design so simple and so ubiquitous it would seem to defy specific interpretation.

But the diamond shape with limb-like extensions from its top and bottom vertices, and sometimes an X form within, has been traced back through 8,000 years of European and Asian textiles as a representation of the Great Goddess, embracing new life within her.

“The Birth Symbol,” an exhibit at the Mingei International Museum of World Folk Art (at University Towne Centre), contains a broad selection of textiles from the 19th and 20th centuries, from Pakistan to Indonesia, all of which incorporate the birth symbol in their designs.

The objects range from rugs to camel headdresses, birthing cloths to funeral shrouds. Many of them are worn by age and use, a reminder that formal display was not the motivating force behind their creation.

How such textiles were made and how they functioned in one particular culture, the nomadic Qashqa’i of Iran, is vividly portrayed in “Woven Gardens,” a 50-minute video accompanying the show. The video establishes a contextual framework enabling one to read the rugs like pages of history, extruding meaning from their seductively rich surfaces.

Designed and made entirely by women, the textiles are perfect integrations of form and function, as well as embodiments of spiritual or religious meaning. Whether such works go by the name of art, folk art or craft is immaterial. They possess a depth and integrity enviable by anyone aspiring to give meaning a visual form.

This enriching exhibit was organized by the Museum for Textiles in Toronto, and supplemented by the Mingei museum. It continues through July 5.

There are insights to be found in Carole Glauber’s exhibit, “City Nights,” at the Spectrum Gallery (744 G St.), but most can be credited to other photographers. Glauber has yet to wrest her own vision from the influences that are helping shape it.

Primary among the models for her black-and-white photography are the night images of Brassai and the street photographs of Garry Winogrand, whose bold, shoot-from-the-hip approach defined an aesthetic of tilted frames and frozen figures that countless photographers now call their own.

Glauber lacks Winogrand’s assertiveness, but she pays homage to his style in the skewed frame of “La Jolla” (1985) and the spontaneous choreography of the figures in “Untitled” (1984) and “Election Night” (1984).

Both represent moments cleanly plucked from the continuum of time, taking advantage of the distortion that results when isolating instants from their natural context. One campaign worker in “Election Night” is caught with excessively shiny teeth, another with unintentionally droopy eyes; all serve as living examples of the oddity of normalcy.

Glauber also photographs the graffiti that clutter the urban landscape. What she photographs is interesting--an old gas pump bearing a spray-painted face, a trompe l’oeil mural of a woman stopping at a corner to fix her shoe--but, as Winogrand has said, an interesting subject doesn’t necessarily make an interesting photograph.

Most of Glauber’s work, even the more dynamic images made at the Del Mar Fair, suffers from broad expanses of dead space, signaling a need for Glauber to move closer into the scenes, to capture the immediacy that first brought them to her attention.

Also on display at Spectrum are ceramics by Judy Pike. After sanding her hand-formed vessels, tying leaves to them and covering them with clay shards, Pike fires the works in a sagger, an enclosure within the kiln. The unusual process yields attractive, delicate work, with a porcelain-smooth surface and subtle, slightly metallic hues.

Both shows run through June 20.