 Wendi Smith Elegy Friday, Sept. 3 - Sunday, Oct. 10 Note: The regular reception with the artist has been cancelled, as the pandemic has curtailed gatherings and we want people to stay safe. The artist has picked a few days and times to be present at the show and speak with guests. If you are interested in attending a very small gathering, you are most warmly invited. Please let the artist or the gallery know, and we will make a space for you. This measure is to spread out our guests, and to support masking. email: [email protected] text: (502) 303-7259 artist statement After working on boxes for the past 7 years, the work has become less about ritual, although it is still a part of this body of work, and more about the dread that simmers underneath what we are experiencing in the world. Ritual in my past work has been an attempt to tap into the ceremonies and objects that are prayerful, hopeful and evocative of unseen power. The ritual connected to these boxes is the ceremonial treatment of death. And because so much of death and dying is done outside the human species, and often because of it, it is there that my intention is founded. I borrow from the reliquaries of prophets and saints to make sacred the tombs of turtles and birds. Technically, these are low color, and reduced pattern to lend solemnity to the contents. I have used metal leaf as a nod to historic reliquaries, and to give them a formal feel. The triptychs and other wall-mounted pieces are a mixture of nature and ritual. about the artist Elegy is Smith's second solo show with garner narrative, postponed over a year because of the shutdown; her first was 2018's Ritual Collections. Smith's resume details over forty years of a faithful and rigorous painting practice. The twin themes of nature and ritual are perennial for Smith. Reliquaries, illuminated manuscripts, and altarpieces are contextual for approaching her work. Smith quietly subverts ideas of value by placing found objects from the natural world—butterfly wings, seed pods, animal bones—into protected spaces inside sturdy wooden vessels. Meanwhile, she paints exacting still lives of these same natural objects on the outside of the vessel, vulnerable and available to touch and gaze. 
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