Picture an art space in Brooklyn or Chicago. For those in the know, it's an attic apartment up some rickety stairs, entered through the back door of a bodega. Now add a good dose of wholesomeness and relocate it to a Vermont dirt crossroads where, on a recent visit, contact improv dancers frolicked under the falling leaves beside a babbling brook and the smell of fresh bread wafted from the Adamant Cooperative — Calais' answer to a bodega. Artist Janet MacLeod turned part of her studio into the upstairs Adamant Cooperative Gallery about three years ago. She, Karen Kane and Joni Clemons curated "Watermarks," a group exhibition on view through October 30. The show examines why people paint with water, which makes sense for a location surrounded by it: Sodom Pond glistens through the upstairs window. "Watermarks" uses just a few pieces from six central Vermont painters to present a remarkably broad look at the medium. In their artist statements, several of the show's participants mention watercolors' ease of use in plein air. East Montpelier artist Susan Bull Riley writes, "I love setting off on a bike ride or a hike with watercolor supplies in my backpack, never knowing if or when I'll find something I want to paint." That spontaneity comes through in MacLeod's series of eight notebook-size watercolor landscape sketches, each thumbtacked to the wall and available for an unassuming $20. These quick, beautifully seen paintings take advantage of the medium to capture moments more than physical spaces: the last glow of sunrise edging out fog, the breeze on a pond, the air before it rains. They are unfussy and casual, conveying everything with a few strokes. Susan Abbott takes a different tack: Her two paintings in the show are complicated still lifes that verge on trompe l'oeil. The emphasis in these watercolors is on color more than water, with red-and-green pears and vibrant tarot cards playing starring roles. Abbott's careful, confident technique is evident, even in giclée prints of the originals. Bull Riley is known for her botanical illustrations. "Maple Leaf, March" offers a decomposed leaf, its holes and lacy veins crunchy and real, a slight shadow seeming to raise it from the page. She manages utter control without suffocating her subject. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Molly Porter's abstract, drippy swirls of paint, torn straight from a spiral-bound sketchbook, are frenzied…