Of all the cop shows in SoHo in recent months - such as the double show called "Cop Sculpture" at American Fine Arts and Pat Hearn, or Chris Burden's "L.A.P.D." cop uniforms for over-seven-footers at Gagosian - the hands-down winner, for me anyway, was Daniel Oates's hand-painted, hand-carved, hand-sewn cartoony, child-sized "Cops" at 303. The Swiss-born, Newcastle upon Tyne-educated Oates combined a brilliant family of artistic effects - state-of-the-ancient-art of carving, impeccable sewing, a Disney surrealist's whimsical imagination, and a working man's sensibility.

Two conversing. troll-sized policemen, one lanky. one round, fit the archetype of the New York cop. Gruff, part nurse, part villain, part street philosopher, their tilted caps and "Whattaya' talkin' about?" hand gestures, showed an everyday acceptance of fate - a requisite of "New York's finest."

The elfin patrolmen were hand-cast in polystyrene, covered with plaster, and overpainted. Their uniforms, holsters, and giant shoes were also handmade - the revolvers, buttons, and nightsticks perfectly carved in slightly larger than life size. In another work, a bureau with an open drawer and an even larger revolver sitting inside, recalled a child's perspective of a not-so-adult world. And in one corner the artist rested a still larger, deftly carved revolver. In all, his juxtaposition of child-sized cops and giant-sized accoutrements created a cartoon surrealism now common in the greatest of all "folk arts," advertising.

Oates is not from the "shopped-for" school of art making common to the last decade or so, nor does he professionally commission his works, as did Burden, among many others. Oates is a hand-doer. And he does it so well that he exhibits a level of craftsmanship that one could associate with an ancient guild or with Santa's elves - with whom his pint-sized characters bear an unmistakable affinity.

Daniel Oates's sculpture is a labor of love, and an ode to working-class heroes and heroines. Over the last two years, this young English artist, who was educated in the ancient art of woodcarving and now lives in New York City, has created an irresistible cast of what he calls "Happy Workers": small cartoon-like figures of cleaning women, laborers and postmen. Toylike, yet oddly dignified, and made by hand with awesome skill, they possess the purity and beauty of religious art. Their mission seems to be to bridge the familiar high-low distinction by a new route: complete sincerity.

In his second solo show, Mr. Oates presents a minor masterpiece: "Cops", a sculpture of two ordinary policemen on beat. Roughly the height of 5- or 6-year-olds, these examples of New York's finest are show in casual conversation that involves as much gesture as talk. One officer is short and round, the other taller and gangly, and from their hammy hands, to their fat little shoes, which meet the ground in ways appropriate to their different weights, Mr. Oates misses no detail of body language, expression or attire. The bulbous eyes of the taller policeman even drift over his partner's shoulder, as if half of his attention is really on the street.

The mesmerizing presence of the pair stems in part from in Mr. Oates's infallible sense of craft and scale. He's a kind of urartisan: the figures are made of painted plaster over polystyrene; the uniforms are sewn, and the nightsticks; radios and even buttons are carved of wood.

His fusion of the comic and the real shows a darker, more Surrealistic side in a larger-than-life night table whose open drawer reveals a big revolver, and an even larger version of the same gun, nearly four feet long, which leans against the wall. These objects effectively reduce the viewer to the size of a child, recalling a time when one could only look up to cops.