Unexpected juxtapositions: architectural drawings of the burned synagogues of prewar Poland with the artist's frolicking or sleeping children in northern New England. The iconography changes. We encounter a rural landscape, the backyard of Clara Mason, neighbor, set in the floor plan of the synagogue of Pohrebyszcze. Dishes, an affirmation of the dailiness of life, nestle in the floor plan of the destroyed prayer house of Peczyniżyn. Three-year-old Saskia builds with blocks. Ten-year-old Zoe swings from a cross section of the synagogue of Janów Sokólski; the name means "Of the Falcons": both images of flight—telepathy through languages and decades.

It would be an understatement to say that Sarah Swenson's art is the fruit of a unique vision. Clearly this is work of a gifted and extremely personal artist. Even when the impact of the iconography is understood, a feeling of recognition does not obviate a sense of disturbance: like all good art it is on the verge.

Swenson's synagogues (rendered from architectural drawings, themselves rendered in most cases after the fact) are seemingly cool, the drawings of the children meticulous, the landscapes, the bird cages, Vermont living, reticent. A conceptual contemporaneity fuses with an understated expressionism.

An unusual way to voice lament; an unusual way to hold out hope.