“Animal Crackers” is the current exhibition at the Columbia City Gallery, a cooperative seriously upping its game the last couple of years.

If one is drawn to seriality in art, as I am, you can find yourself lost in the thirteen small paintings that make up Seattle painter Saundra Fleming’s contribution. An homage to Judi Dench, yes the British actress, this tribute is reverently irreverent and compelling in its wide array of styles, including nods to Cubism and Surrealism.

How an artist can be goofy and intense simultaneously shows a kind of myriad-mindedness we ought to demand of artists, but don’t because we so seldom find it. Saundra Fleming’s “Animal Crackers” is an alchemical act.