The painter John Vander has said that Dozier Bell, in her tiny charcoals, "is dropping small stones into very still, deep water."

I concur, applaud Mr. Vander for the rich analogy and add that the stones are exquisite. And they are that almost to the point of aesthetic pain. Their Lilliputian dimensions - a couple of square inches, perhaps a bit more - draw you in and once they have you they become palpable. It is as though your eye makes physical contact with their soft surfaces and is unable to release itself.

But this enchantment is not Mr. Vander's principal point. He muses on the philosophical implications of the drawings. Here he joins the rest of us. Bell's work is often seen, looked forward to with impatience, fully narrative but essentially enigmatic.

These tiny landscapes, urban views and celestial recordings hold their own counsel. They are omens, but what they portend is ours to divine. And regardless of our appraisal of their mission, we are left with the sense that Bell probably meant something else.