Art dealers, are, at the very least, baby-sitters for artworks. Like any caretaker, the gallerist is entrusted with valuables too vulnerable to be left unguarded. It’s his or her job to watch over the fragile products brought in by hardworking artists, and, if necessary, to coddle these objects—to water them or dust them, plug them in or switch them off. It’s no wonder, then, that so many artists fixate on gallery and dealer, making works that incorporate the architecture of the space or bring the viewer’s attention to the guy (or gal) in the back office.

In Cabinet, 1995, Glen Seator reconstructed

The most interesting work I have seen lately has generally been less than a foot square in size—an intimacy of scale that is an invitation into an internal universe. Mary Swanson’s modest airbrushed drawings, meticulous india-ink renderings of a world populated by inanimate but spirited entitles, are a new addition to the category of the small piece. Swanson assembles her small beings from various nameable and unnameable, fragmentary sources: twisted roots, the bowl of a decorative pipe, a tulip, the broken blades of a hand fan, a wooden gizmo that resembles the ribs of an umbrella. Like characters