PORTALS AND PATHWAYS

This installation focuses on plant and animal/insect life that are compromised by our changing climate and references the flora and plants that are becoming extinct and changing in our Southern California region while re-imagining and valuing the possibilities of new colorful hybrids, insects and animals that could exist because of these changes. Using diaphanous fabrics to create banners in various sizes, printing and painting loose atmospheric background brush strokes suggesting elements, such as water rushing in a stream, the sun’s rays scorching our earth, or wild wind picking up just before a drenching rain. All powerful elemental forces of our changing planet that I discover, record and experience on my many walks and travels in the wilderness and other natural areas.

My ‘banners’ rise out of the light and shadows that I witness through the seasons at various times of the day and early evenings. I recreate the ephemeral as organic nature-driven forms that reflect this shape-shifting landscape. These shapes, bounded by curves & fluid boundaries mirror the constantly unfolding transitions of light and color. For me, they reveal optimism, expansiveness, creation, and the life force. I build my compositions with multiple layers and an array of techniques and tools as I seek a balance between the once tamed landscape and its original feral state.

Diversions LA. The exhibition takes viewers on a journey inspired by Smith’s own daily walks along More Mesa in Santa Barbara. It’s a literal and emotional garden of delights that stretches from floor to ceiling with gauzily floating banners forming a kind of forest, printed with images of Smith’s paintings and sheer fabric with the lovely words of the artist’s own poetry.

LUM Art Magazine. Smith’s multisensory installation features flowing banners printed with Smith’s vivid abstract paintings inspired by daily walks along Santa Barbara’s More Mesa Park. Interspersed are sheer banners featuring personal poetry handstamped with wooden blocks carved by Smith. Circular “portals” hang from floor to ceiling adorned with Smith’s photography of local flora and fauna, as well her paintings and impressions of the trails that surround More Mesa. Ambient sounds of crashing waves, animal life and encounters recorded by Smith further invite visitors to take in the experience of walking along the trails as nature and human life collide and overlap.

Dr. Betty Ann Brown, art historian, critic, and curator writes,  

KERRIE SMITH’S SEASONAL AESTHETICS

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 California Art and Nature Museum 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 Summer 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 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.

Dr. Betty Ann Brown

Pasadena 2022