La Cienega Area

Realistic watercolor can be the stuff of sidewalk art shows, but Sharon Maczko and Meg Huntington Cajero make technically sound works that jostle realism just enough.

Maczko builds painstaking environments of real and constructed objects and then faithfully reproduces them in skillfully handled watercolor. The content of the works, collectively called “The Mind at Play,” holds time in abeyance, capturing the private worlds of childhood.

In one work Maczko stages an interior view of a brick-colored blanket draped over furniture to make the ubiquitous tent we all set up as kids. The light from outside shines through the blanket, creating a wondrous hiding place with detailed remnants of play: a half-eaten sandwich, an overturned drink. Another scene captures the bright, sharp light of morning sun shining into a shuttered closet door to show Mom’s shoes and dresses. Inside we find a ransacked makeup kit and lipstick scribbles on the wall.

Maczko gives all this nostalgic detail--cardboard box hide-outs, paper cutouts and tinfoil swords--a weightless, dreamlike quality. Though a few pieces are gooey, the best works celebrate the magic of childhood.

Meg Huntington Cajero shows works that depict close-up groupings of glass vases whose surfaces reflect and refract the rainbow hues around them. The translucent vases are loosely realistic. She captures the tricky colorless sheen of crystal with ease, but more interesting are the shifting mosaic patterns of rich abstract color. (Hunsaker/Schlesinger, 812 N. La Cienega Blvd., to Sept. 10.)