Entry 07: SOLSTICE, EXHIBITION REFLECTIONS
A LETTER FOR THE LONGEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR: REVIEWING A SUBTERRANEAN SEASON OF WORK, LAST WEEK'S OPENING of ' The Dance of Life, ' and MEDITATIONS ON THE YEAR 2050...
First, happy solstice from my corner of the world to yours —
I reflect on this shortened day with reverence to all of its manifestations, across cultures, worlds, millennia:
Last week in San Fransisco, The Dance of Life: liminal works opened at P A L L A S, my first exhibition comprised of mostly ceramic works.
For a brief period, earlier in life, I thought I would “be” a ceramic artist. In August, I found my way back to clay — as I tend to do, oscillating mediums between projects. I became a member of a studio some blocks off the lake I biked around, offering some structure to an otherwise submerged season of my life. This return, unlike previous explorations, felt more energetically drawn, timely. I was in the process of my own series of emotional excavations, spending a summer at home, and it only made sense, in hindsight, that I would return to touching earth.
Responding to this series of works, friend, artist, and psychoanalyst in formation, Sara Lopez writes:
Dirt moves, it scatters, and touches everything it encounters. Smith’s ceramic works– molded from wet dirt and shaped by hand are already in the field of touch, allowing us to be touched in return. In Clarice Lispector’s novel, Água Viva, she writes, “From the desert I would also return empty, illuminated and translucent, and with the same vibrating silence of a mirror. Its form doesn’t matter: no form manages to circumscribe and alter it. Mirror is light. A tiny piece of mirror is always the whole mirror” (Lispector 70). From the earth, Smith’s works, quiet and alive, are too, like these fragmented mirrors– each scene illuminating the whole of human longing, loss, and persistence. We are reminded that every new mark is simultaneously always an ancient one, and we discover fissures through their iterability– opening our imagination to what else is possible.
These works had been with me a long time before they became physical. Each story, parable, myth, familial history held at the tip of my fingers; I spent no more than 30 minutes on each piece. My “dramas,” exploring the range between comedy, tragedy, both ancient and contemporary motifs alike. Rendered in earth-old material, I imagined many of these themes — a reflection of our past 2-3,000 years — may be found to a distant future as distinctive relics of this era. Hopefully, by then, distant relics of a foreign past.
As this body of work, research, and writing came together over the past month, a singular summation lit up in my mind: A reliquary for the future
P A L L A S
1117 Geary St. #Annex
San Francisco CA 94109
Saturdays 12 - 4 pm
and by appointment
‘ 2050 ’
is the first official installment of audio project ANONYMOUS RADIO, a sonic division of A.M.S.
‘ 2050 ’ is only 25 years away. Over the course of a year, I’ve recorded friends, family, acquaintances — many of whom have hosted me in various ways over a transient past few seasons — on their premonitions, anxieties, and hope for the future. In collecting and collaging voices across worlds, one singular voice of the eternal seems to emerge in a universal prayer.
Subscribers may access a first listen here: (33:00 minutes)
Password: 2050
