Sarah Smith

ARTIST STATEMENT

Wings, Shells and Shell Collection Collages by Sarah Smith

These sculptures and collages came from a desire to take a break from painting and to explore spontaneity and chance. My art studio has always been a place I go to escape the stresses of my job (I work as a decorative painter and faux finisher in private homes all over the Bay Area) but last year I got into a bit of a rut creatively. I wasn’t painting in my studio anymore and I wasn’t sketching much either. I finally realized I put too many expectations on myself to do great things in my studio after a 40 hour week of painting in other people’s homes. A friend had given me a gorgeous book called, The Shell: 500 Million Years Of Inspired Design - just the astounding title alone sent my mind reeling. I devoured the book and decided to make some shells.

For quite some time I’ve stored boxes of wood scraps and left over off-cuts from previous wood sculptures and installations I made in the past. Moving studios several times necessitated cutting things up and even though a lot got thrown away, some precious boxes of scraps always moved with me. The wings and shells are made from these.

I use a hot glue gun and work quickly assembling my shells and wings with little to no modification to the scraps. Just grab a scrap out of the box, hold it this way or that, don’t worry about making something anatomically correct, accept my decisions on the fly, laugh a little, say why not, apply hot glue and keep going. That’s basically the process. Using the scraps “as-is” was liberating and kept self-doubt at bay.

Coating my sculptures in hydrocal, which is a fast-drying plaster, allows me to give a chalky, dry, bright white look to everything. I use plastic utensils to smooth on the plaster and as it starts to quickly set and harden I use a plastic fork to add texture. I make my own paints for the shells from dry pigments mixed with distilled water and a binder. The homemade watercolors soak into the plaster in such a way that it looks like fresco which I love. Looking at the cubist masterworks of Georges Braque has been a huge inspiration in both the paint application and the attitude I tried to have while making my shells - explore the impression, play around with layers, have fun.

Being so caught up in the joy of making shells I started seeing shell forms in almost everything. The collages come from that sensation. A passing glance at the dried paint on my palette paper revealed shells. Because I’d benefited so much from the spontaneity of making my little sculptures I applied the same attitude to the collages and using scissors I extracted the shell forms from the paint smeared paper without too much concern for scientific accuracy. Once arranged on the background I painted a tromp i’oeil cast shadow as a nod to my dual life as a decorative painter.

Trust momentum and don’t overthink anything - the two rules I embraced for this new body of work. I tried to remove intention from my process. Of course, I knew I ultimately wanted to make a shell or a wing but the process of getting there was like taking a walk in the woods and only looking up at the sky and the branches arching overhead rather than down at the path to avoid stumbling.