Sensitivity to diverse materials, especially clay and paper, links the art of Rachel Citrino and Carole Sivin, who currently split the exhibition space at the DaVinci Art Alliance.

Citrino's installations in the North Gallery play to an intrinsic coziness in what was once a domestic space. An aura of comfy, consciously kitschy warmth emanates from Heart-H, a fireplace-like installation constructed of books and illuminated by an artery of red tube lighting.

Because it is Women's History Month, Citrino related her work in this show to women; but female identity is clearly an ongoing theme for her, producing a kind of aggregate, multifaceted self-representation. The books, mostly novels, that define her hearth-shaped niche are old -- not rare but distinctly quaint. Citrino collected them over a period of 10 years. "They're mostly beach reading," she chuckles, noting that the language of titles can be an engrossing sociological study. All of these books reference women's roles or women's names.

Across from Heart-H, Trophies, a group of clay vessels on a found mantle shelf, reiterates the hearth theme. Above it, Citrino hung digital prints of three found yard-sale photographs clearly originating in a past generation. The prints, reproducing the original photographs exactly, are close-ups of women's hands, almost archetypal in their simplicity: The hands are crocheting, peeling potatoes and holding a bottle of castor oil and a spoon.

These photographs are repeated in smaller scale in another part of the show. A drawing of a woman who was mourning the death of her 73-year-old son when Citrino met her in Abruzzi, Italy, is also reproduced in several scales and places. Most prominently, the drawing is mounted in a weathered, wood-framed window, but it's also in the hearth installation and embedded in other works. In the bright-colored digital triptych, Trinitat, she appears with a manipulated photograph of Citrino as a younger woman and a photograph of a clay figure made by Citrino to resemble a goddess figure from Crete. On a personal level, the triptych suggests the stages of life of one woman, the artist, as well as all women.

Clay portrait heads and vessels present less-focused metaphors of woman. Most interesting is a large container-like structure mounted on a red velvet pedestal. Lit from inside, the exterior is composed of triangular clay wafers, each stamped with a spiral and draped over a metal framework.

Moving from Citrino's space into the contiguous South Gallery, there is a shift of focus from indoors to outdoors, from female identity to impersonal nature, from cultural commentary to forces beyond definition, and from Europe to Asia. Though the symbolic vocabulary of the two artists is distinct, the installation provides a polished segue between two worlds.

Sivin combines clay, paper and much more so thoroughly that the identity of the original material is often lost. It is no illusionistic disguise, but rather her instinctive, gestural tactility refined through years of cultivation. Although certain stoneware pieces on the gallery floor or shelves resemble stones or pebbles and other elements suggest leaves, flowers, moss or grasses, the essential quality of Sivin's work responds to energy in the guise of nature, full of movement and patterning.

Like paintings come to vivid and unpredictable life, Sivin's botanical, wall-based reliefs are exuberant. After a long monochromatic phase, her return to intense "bursts of color like I used when I was beginning painting" was inspired by her decision to reuse some of those very same paintings of 30 years ago. The title Endings and Beginnings (inverting the usual phrase to indicate the ultimate destination of the artist's earlier work) autobiographically references two phases of the artist's work as well as the cyclic nature of plant life.

In a related piece, Exploding Flower, Falling Leaves, twisted strips of this same early work terminate in lovely unfurled fronds. Clusters of sandy fragments painted in pinks and ochres, blues and siennas nestle in folds as if washed there by spring floods. Tangled filaments suggest seaweed or vines. In Sea Terrace Fragment, also full of movement, tiny rolls of paper have been inserted into many small openings, like bright-colored buds or shells. Surfaces are embroidered with layers of calligraphic paint, sometimes glittering with gold or softened into inky shadows.

From the Trembling Earth, a free-standing paper bulb-shaped sculpture, may be the sole example of a scale shift larger than that which is represented. A series of hanging hollow paper spheres might be metaphorical globes, none of which is perfect. Autumnal Orb is brightly painted, while Calligraphic Sphere is pierced with numerous wound-like teardrop holes lighted to pick out the flakes of mica inside. Ancient Life Traces is torn open to reveal even more of the iridescent minerals.

In spite of charming works such as a single white stoneware leaf delicately stroked with red, and the traditional elements and statements in Endings and Beginnings, Sivin's vision is not conventionally graceful. But that is satisfying. Its uncompromising directness underlines its authenticity.

Through March 30, DaVinci Art Alliance, 704 Catharine St., 215-829-0466