I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in turn, seems the loveliest.
~ Mark Twain
...the seasons sometimes gain by being brought into the house, just as they gain by being brought into painting and into poetry. The hand, fastidious and bold, which selected and placed--it was that which made the difference.
~Willa Cather
Kerrie Smith deploys all kinds of media--painting, photography, printmaking, and digital technology--to create images of the natural world. Recently she has focused on depicting More Mesa, just north of Santa Barbara, California, where she takes daily hikes with her dog and camera. Walking through the dense oak woodland, climbing the steep coastal bluffs, and negotiating the meandering wetlands, Smith explores the 340-acre mesa to document the insects, birds, and plants that populate the region.
She translates her peripatetic experiences into an intriguing diversity of artworks, including circular photographs that range from panoramic scenes to close-up details; translucent vertical banners that present swirling abstractions of natural forms; and mandalas comprised of the flowers, leaves, and twigs she gathers as she perambulates the mesa. These three visual formats--photographs, painted banners, and assembled mandalas--are joined by texts of the artist's poems and audiotapes of mesa sounds, from calling birds to crashing waves.
Smith has organized her responses to More Mesa into a rich and dynamic "Portals & Pathways" installation for the Michele Kuelbs Tower Gallery of the Wilding Museum of Art and Nature in Solvang, California. The museum awarded Smith a one-year residency so that the artist can continually transform her art into reflections of the annual seasons. At this writing, "Portals & Pathways" is focused on autumn. The artist will merge it into winter before the end of her residency.
The Tower Gallery is surrounded by tall windows that flood the space with sunlight. Smith's photographic discs are suspended vertically, strung like pictorial pearls. They cast silvery shadows around the gallery. The painted banners add shimmering ribbons of color to the visual reflections. Texts of the artist's More Mesa-inspired poetry and the recorded sounds offer layered dimensions to the space.
Smith's photographs and watercolor studies of the mesa are cut into circular discs that are tied, with invisible fishing line, to hang like scenic beads on an architectural necklace. All of the discs ("Portals) pair two distinct images, front and back. The fishing line that connects them allows them to drift and rotate, so that viewers are constantly seeing diverse visual perspectives. A bee, a moth, a beetle. Seaweed arranged on the sand, a wild flower-lined path, waves covering the sand with lacey spume.
The painted banners ("Pathways") are covered in dark serpentine lines that swirl through pastel regions. They recall the sparkling ocean water, or the shallow undulations of creeks. Or perhaps the patterns of the curving trails that cross the mesa.
Scattered over the gallery floor are several photographs of the mandalas Smith created from natural materials and organized into radially symmetrical circles. Like Irish artist Andy Goldsworthy, Smith collects seasonal offerings (leaves, flowers, grasses, acorns, etc.) and arranges them, then documents the compositions with her camera. In the end, she allows the movements of the tide and currents of wind to send them back to the sea. Also like Goldsworthy, Smith is aware that her mandalas are ephemeral art, created to exist and then fade into non-existence.
Smith's poetry enhances the installation with words limned on the walls and on pale fabric, hanging like Asian scrolls, from the gallery ceiling. The artist hand-cut her own typeface from small wooden blocks that were arranged, inked, and printed, using the same technique artists have employed since the European Middle Ages.
Her "More Mesa Autumn 2022" poem begins:
Our California Savannah
Rich in flowers and greenery
And field grasses slowly blown to blonde
By the summer wind and seasonal heat...
She concludes:
We are the stewards for further generations
Let us serve with joy and appreciation.
Smith is firmly committed to conservation efforts and hopes her artwork will inspire others to do the same. To that end, she combines multiple interactive community events with her exhibition. This summer, she organized a family day to instruct children how to make "Pathways" in the Wilding Museum. She will continue with additional events intended to inspire participants to interact with art and nature--which is, of course, the basis for Smith's prodigious talent.
Betty Ann Brown
Pasadena 2022
