Caroline Smith + bio | statement | press
May 24, 2007
The AJC
“CHIMERA AMONG US” at Whitespace features sculpture from two artists whose work is hard to tell apart.
Caroline Campbell Smith and Julia Hill, studio mates and fellow Tuhne University graduates (2002 and 200% respectively), specialize in strange forms and creatures, and since Smith’s dark-colored clay sometimes resembles Hill’s metal, it can be tough to determine who created what.
This is to the show’s advantage, since Hill’s curious metal cup shapes on legs (‘The Function is Shifting”) are as much like some version of mutant as Smith’s giant glass and ceramic animal daws (“The Anatomy of Your Memory”). Smith says her chimeras are fierce, with “layers of built-up defense mechanisms,” but the same goes for Hill’s shapes and surfaces.
The mind-bending vibe in the midst of this menagerie of creatures that are neither animal nor vegetable is reinforced by spiny seed-pod forms on a wall close to daws inset by rectangular slabs reminiscent of the growths on rotting tree trunks. ‘We, too, are part of nature,” Smith says of her work, “and our actions are not without consequence.”
* THE 411 : Through June 2 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. Whitespace, 814
Edgewood Ave N .E., Atlanta. 404-688- 1892, www.whitespace814.com.
Review of Chimera Among Us
May 2007
Art Papers
By Diana McClintock
Perched near the ceiling, small four-legged creatures watch over hoofed tree worms, flower-bird-Persian cats, nail-anemones, and an armored shrimp in Chimera Among Us [Whitespace Gallery; May 16-June 2, 2007]. Julia Hill’s colonies of hybrid bronze, steel, and ceramic creations assertively coexist with Caroline Smith’s anthropomorphic ceramic forms in the intimate spaces of the gallery. The effect is charming and repulsive, fantastic and familiar, fragile and fearsome.
Both artists present animal or plant-like concretions that recall the mythological lion-goat-snake Chimera. In the series Anatomy of Your Memory, 2007, Smith pairs ceramic and glass worm or tentacle-like forms in a duet that could be hostile or tender. Her intention is, in fact, to explore interpersonal aggression while encouraging compassion and connection. Reaching upward, the pairs bend towards each other. Their overlapping shadows become part of their still ballet, activating the space around us. A single bony claw graces the bottom of each anthropomorphic ceramic figure’s hoofs, enhancing the creatures’ chimera quality while rendering them both strange and familiar.
Hill’s The Function is Shifting, 2007, distributes four wire-legged constructions topped by bronze basket-like casts throughout the space. Oblivious to one another, they stand on the ground like alien plant creatures. At the far end of the room, her installation Tidal Reoccurrence, 2007, features a colony of pale ceramic barnacles whose seaweed sprays of black-brown recycled nails cling to the wall. In both works, Hill’s transformation of recognizable elements into unexpectedly ambiguous creatures reinforces her assertion that “things are not always as they seem.”
In the next room, spiny recycled-nail anemones break away from one another in Hill’s Predictable Reaction Series, 2007. Deceptively delicate, these symmetrically-arranged asymmetrical organisms cast patterns of linear shadows across the bare wall. By contrast, her ceramic, steel, and mesh conglomeration Filtered Effects, 2007, resembles a cluster of three self-contained cells or spherical modules that barely open to the outside.
Hill’s intimate wall installations provide an effective foil for Smith’s three large ceramic hybrids, which dominate this room. Two human-sized forms, Khattam-Shud #1 and Khattam-Shud #2, 2007, resemble enlarged versions of the jointed tentacle forms of her Anatomy of Your Memory series, 2007. Here, she juxtaposes earthy brown glazes with bits of unglazed clay, recalling the bone-claws of smaller works. The protruding clay fragments also resemble fragile fungus clinging to sections of a massive trunk while the tops taper and bend toward each other, imparting an animal quality to these hybrid creations.
Smith’s admiration for clay’s ability to take on any form is borne out by the unexpectedly light, feathery qualities of I Am Not a Role Model, 2007. Attached to the wall at about four feet from the ground, its rounded body curves straight out and down to the floor where it coils like the tail of an enormous Persian cat. Smith has even attached white synthetic fur to its underside. Pink and white ceramic petals cover its top and sides like feathers, however, suggesting a cross between cat, bird, and flower. As massive as the ponderous Khattam-Shud pieces, this work seems strangely delicate and decorative.
The four-part Chimera Watcher series, 2007, is dispersed throughout the exhibition as four dark-grey ceramic Chimeras perch like gargoyles atop the walls, watching the hybrid menagerie and spectators below. These long-tailed faceless creatures sit like dogs, move like cats or monkeys, and adopt a distinctly human body language. Though stealthy and perhaps sinister, Chimeras are also helpless and vulnerable, eliciting a strange combination of distance and empathy from us. As such, the artist enlists them here to tackle the “uncomfortable edges” that separate people from creatures that are different.
One Chimera looks out glass doors to two pieces on the patio. Hill’s Contour of an Observation, 2007, resembles a jester’s dancing legs upside down on the ground. Seemingly created from corrugated, rusted steel drums, the work’s surface is punctuated with a lacey pattern of small holes and attached wire mesh that convey a whimsical lightheartedness. You Mock My Pain, 2007, a collaboration between the two artists, concludes our journey through their hybrid menagerie. This ceramic and steel form resembles an enormous armored shrimp with a ceramic burlap shell and steel-wire feelers. Filled with fantastic transformations of familiar elements and materials into strange creatures, this exhibition incites us to reevaluate our preconceptions of the grotesque and the mythological.