If you want to understand what the artists are saying in "The Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize Finalists: Artscape at the BMA," you need to look at the unconventional materials used.

Culled from 325 applicants in this Artscape-affiliated competition now in its third year, the six finalists in the Sondheim show are Becky Alprin, Melissa Dickenson, Dawn Gavin, Geoff Grace and Maren Hassinger, all from Baltimore, and Molly Springfield, from Washington, D.C.

The strongest artwork is in the first gallery you enter at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Hassinger's work includes "Wrenching News," a floor-sited installation consisting of newspapers twisted and bound together so tightly that you initially may not even realize they're newspapers.

Hundreds of newspaper pages covering a good bit of the museum floor almost seem like an organic field of some sort. Information has been repackaged in such an extreme fashion that what might be termed old news has been newly transformed into pages whose tight binding perhaps suggests the emotional impact of such news.

Sharing the gallery with her is Gavin, whose work includes the wall-mounted "Annular." This may be the finest piece in the entire show. It consists of concentric circles constructed of small pins that are closely spaced together. Fragments of maps have been attached to the heads of the pins. The original purpose of the maps no longer has any meaning, of course, and so Gavin uses those fragments to create some kind of new map.

The clever pairing of Hassinger and Gavin in the same room exemplifies how such information-embedded items as newspapers and maps can be altered to such an extent that they're now serving a different informational purpose.

Dickenson has a number of works on handmade paper that use graphite, ink, acrylic paint and sewing-associated threads to expand the notion of what materials typically are deployed for works-on-paper. Characteristic of her use of materials and her natural themes is "Redwood," in which red stitches bluntly are sewn through white paper that also contains a small painting of an owl perched on a branch.

Springfield skillfully pursues conceptual goals with works on paper that question our assumptions about original printed texts and reproductions of them. Taking pages from ancient tomes, Springfield painstakingly makes graphite drawings that are nearly exact replicas. Her exploration plays out in some interesting technical variations.

Grace's multi-media installation covers a lot of the wall with a mix of photographs, drawings and objects that amount to a tour ranging from local sites to exotic sites abroad. He also alludes to different stylistic influences in art, as in one schematic drawing of a hooded figure that evokes the Ku Klux Klan-ish hooded figures done by Philip Guston in the 1970s.

Alprin contributes acrylic and wood constructions that are highly abstracted cityscapes and landscapes. Some are mounted on the floor, and some are hanging on the wall. Collectively, they're a topographic presentation that exists in her imagination -- and now in yours.

"The Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize Finalists: Artscape at the BMA" runs through Aug. 3 at the Baltimore Museum of Art, at 10 Art Museum Drive at N. Charles and 31st streets. The winner of the Sondheim Prize will be announced at a reception at the BMA July 12 at 7 p.m. Call 443-573-1700 or go to www.artbma.org.

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