ART ON THE HUDSON PHOTOS, CITIES AND FISHING IN COLUMBIA COUNTY GALLERIES.(ARTS)

Byline: WILLIAM JAEGER Special to the Times Union

Gift buying and giving infects everything this time of year, even art galleries and art reviewers. Suddenly, all the attractive artworks in the two private galleries I visited, and even many at a more alternative space, looked suspiciously like presents waiting to be wrapped.

The art was more accessible, conventional and attractive. Gallery hopping became a bizarrely blithe affair.

The pretty (if lightweight) photographs and altered photographs by Sarah Sterling at the Davis & Hall Gallery in Hudson openly toy with cliches, but don't quite succumb to them. A series of spent flowers -- tulips, mainly -- are photographed in warm colors, the backgrounds painted over in soft …