Recently I started to go through my photos of my classes and students, finding much inspiration and joy from them. I don’t know when I will see the printmakers again, so decided to make a small book for myself. Only this will take time so until then you will have to be satisfied with a few of my prints posted in the side bar.
I am still learning to be a writer and blogger to do with my art practice. I’d rather be in the studio making pictures most of the time. I am still figuring out what the blog is about, but mostly it’s about my love of poetry and printing. There! And also the people who are brave enough to make things.
I am very inspired by old buildings and places of historical interest where people have long lived. Old grave yards, stone mounds in the middle of nowhere, weathered wood siding with all the paint falling off–go figure since I was a painter and “fine finisher” for two decades! But the wear of time and weather is much preferable to my Artist. These places of age and perhaps neglect show they were once touched and loved by people. They were made by people who valued them in the making, who died before their usefulness expired. Then new people came along… Maybe sometimes these places and times and people become forgotten or rotten, or restored as the buildings are being restored at the shaker village I went to. And yet, even a piece of an old fence spied inside overtaking shrubs holds memory. It is that memory I sometimes think I am grasping for when I make a print.
I grew up in this town when there were a lot more visible old things and also older folks who had lived here a long time before I was born, living in Victorians that were probably new when they moved in.
It hurts to see many of the old homes gone now.
This grouping of prints are mostly monotypes done in the last few years inspired by my trip to Kentucky, specifically an old Shaker Village called Pleasant Hill.
shaker print 
shaker print 
shaker print 
shaker print
It was pleasant there–very green in late August. The orchard was overblown by then with nodding cone flowers and the last of the blooming zinnias. It reminded me of California, actually, with the wild flowers in the big fields much the same as the farm country I am used to seeing here. The old apple trees near the entrance were so perfectly imperfect! I love seeing weathered bent apple trees still fully producing fruit!
And that’s another series I am currently working on based on an old apple farm I am all in love with up in the gold country.
Susanne M. Smith-Artist 