Known for films of inner intensity, Alain Cavalier completed a series of mercurial sketches about a seemingly staid subject, women and their work. These sharply drawn portraits (twenty-four in all, of which we show seven) focus on rare and disappearing crafts, perfected crafts that recall traditions long lost. One woman makes meticulously dyed cloth flowers, another repairs by hand lumpy wool mattresses, yet another wraps paper garlands of exquisite detail. Cavalier fondly captures them in the workplace, nimble with their tools, and finds a contentment that comes of mastery-forty years at a trade, perhaps at the same bench, and ne'er a day missed. A quirky but reverent interviewer, Cavalier plies the women with questions meant to elucidate their craft and plumb their place in the world. Each sketch is a beautiful miniature, poetically rendering a life's work with a few well-chosen flourishes.-Steve Seid