Amanda Smith: Traps
3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series
September 25, 2010 – January 9, 2011
Atrium Gallery
Amanda Smith’s work explores constructions of space and environment, and how these conditions relate specifically to painting. As an artist who is also heavily influenced by film, she absorbs spaces, movements, and compositions into memory as if they were actual sites. Her paintings reflect this absorption by using cinematic space as a site to return to, re-experience and reinvent. Although not intended to produce commentary about a specific film or films in general, her paintings are conscious of the influence of cinematic space— how it dominates the way people perceive, remember, and imagine environments.
The following is a conversation between Kris Douglas and Amada Smith.
Kris Douglas: What do you extract from the environment and narrative of film for your own work?
Amanda Smith: In general, I am pretty terrible at coming up with or making narrative things, and I am also of the opinion that painting is a really poor vehicle for narrative. Film does a fine job of being beautiful and breathtaking and whatnot, but I think there’s a huge amount of information and subtlety in cinematic imagery that is lost in its narrative presentation. In this sense I think painting and film pair nicely, in that they do totally different things with space and narrative - they can both pick up where the other left off and explore issues of space that the other medium isn’t capable of. I think painting allows for a maker or viewer to think more about their contribution to narrative, in film or otherwise. I don’t think painting can tell much of a narrative, but it can help you understand what you anticipate or expect from a narrative, and which cues determine those expectations.
When I watch a film, the director, cinematographer, etc., tell me how to see and understand a space according to their narrative. At the same time, they are also telling me many other ways to see a space. I’m trying to explore some of those other possibilities.
KD: Are simultaneous interactions of abstract and representational space a primary concern?
AS: I think so...when I watch a film, there are countless points throughout the narrative where, if I were to pause the image, the space depicted is completely abstracted - through a quick movement, altered lighting, close zoom, or whatever else. There’s a nice coherence and fluidity between completely abstracted and representational images of space over a course of a film; in the painting, this is a little different – supposedly, it’s usually too jarring or it’s not cohesive. While I’m thinking about and making paintings, I’m influenced by that experience in film and want to be able to include it all in a painting. That can be trickier to pull off when everything you see is all right in front of you at one time, like it is in a painting. I’m interested in trying to convey, to a certain degree, a sense of anticipation of unfolding space, and I think having a mix of representational and abstracted elements helps foster that sense. I think about this in a few ways; sometimes I like to think about abstraction later in the painting process by responding to and exaggerating elements of the paint surface and handling, and sometimes I like to think about very early on in the construction of the source collage or maquette structure.
KD: Many of your works suggest passageways to other spaces (a partially obstructed hole in the floor, a half-open door, a path over a wall)—they certainly invite consideration of what is on the other side—do you yourself have a vision of what is on the other side of those entry points as you are creating your work? Or is it just the idea that there is other space?
AS: I think this question is actually at the heart of why I feel compelled to make paintings from film images. I “still” films and find these kinds of spaces because I love how much the formal elements of the space can build-up a sense of drama and anticipation. I think this type of image requires some kind of outlet or release, but I also think that can happen without showing what’s next in a narrative way or with multiple images. As someone who makes and loves to look at paintings, I am most interested in the duality of painting’s language, which is almost always vacillating between image space and surface space. So, in painting I think the outlet or space beyond that passageway can actually be the surface of the painting itself, and the activity of being seduced by the material or investigating/speculating how the painting might have been made. I suppose the short of it is that I see film space as yet another opportunity for painting to be reflexive…I like that painting is kind of a big ravenous monster that can sustain and self-generate on anything.
Do I envision another space on the other side of these portals? I do and I don’t. I try to keep the suggested “next space” mysterious in my practice, hoping that it will then read as intriguing and open in the work. To achieve that though, I think in my role as painter I do have to have something specific in mind in order to be able to create that sense of anticipation visually in the paintings. At the same time, I worry that if space is too realized or familiar to me, that the resulting painting will be stiff or pedantic. As I’m working, I’ll try to keep these concerns balanced by having a specific space in mind on the other side of the threshold that will change into another and then another over the course of making the work. I will try to change my idea of what that specific space is fairly often. Sometimes that next space ends up being the next painting.
KD: Is there a certain genre of film that informs your work? The idea of portals to another space or narrative could be suggestive of suspense, thriller, or mystery. Or for instance, your work CAIRN (2010) has the appearance of a science fiction film.
AS: For this exhibition, I have based a lot of the paintings on films that present environment or landscape as an antagonistic character – “Picnic at Hanging Rock” by Peter Weir, “Woman in the Dunes” by Hiroshi Teshigahara, “Onibaba” by Kaneto Shindo, and “Lessons in Darkness” by Werner Herzog. These films each really honed in on a specific material in nature that we might think of as innocuous at first - sand, rock, oil – and turned these materials into obstacles that are alluring, overwhelming, and hostile. These films also work with and in natural spaces, but manage to make these spaces read as very controlled, almost to the point of resembling interior spaces. Outdoor spaces in these images become very claustrophobic, helping viewers focus on whichever anxiety-inducing material is starring in the film.
That is an example of how I often work. I “get on a kick” with a few films that link visually or conceptually, and those films spur a series of paintings (or I have an overarching idea for a series of paintings that spurs a search for supporting films). Though I work with this kind of structure, my paintings usually also include elements inspired by spaces from other random films sources – for example, “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Logan’s Run” (there’s your sci-fi, ha ha!) and “Carrie” all made it into this group of paintings, so you can see how I’m ultimately pretty indiscriminate about which references make it into the paintings. I think it’s also important to note that though film is my preferred point-of-departure, I do depart. I draw on the paintings, I wipe out or cover up big areas, and I make up elements that don’t have a relationship to film but that do service spatial readings and the overall strength of the painting.
KD: How does your color palette impact these spaces you create?
AS: My palette has a lot of influences. I am somewhat faithful to the film source/s that I happen to be looking at with each painting, I have my own proclivities for using certain colors, and I am also influenced by palettes that I’m really attracted to in other paintings. The truth about color use in my work is that some colors serve a spatial purpose, and some colors just keep me happy and excited about painting.
If I’m attracted to the palette or color functions in an important way in my chosen film still, I try to keep some of that original color in the painting. Sometimes I make clunky little 3-D maquettes of film spaces, and I photograph these to include in the collages that I paint from. When I make these 3-D models, I like to light them with exaggerated colors to create an atmosphere and heighten a theatrical, abstracted, or constructed sense in the space. I often like gratuitousness in painting, and these exaggerated colors always push the palettes of my spaces into a kind of pastel territory, which I think adds a touch of weirdness or humor to the images.
Kris Douglas is Chief Curator at the Rochester Art Center
image: Dune, 2010
Artist Biography
Amanda Smith received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 2005 from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, and her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2008. Her solo exhibitions include Threshold at the Leedy-Voulkos Arts Center, Kansas City, MO and Escape Routes at Conkling Gallery, Minnesota State University, Mankato. Her work has also been included in the exhibitions The Backyard, McLean County Arts Center, Bloomington, IL; Agoraphobia/Claustrophobia at Destorow Gallery, Savannah, GA; Paint Snob 2010, Gallery 500X, Dallas, TX; Return to Departure at Kirkland Art Center, Kirkland, WA among others, and will be in the upcoming exhibition Middle States at Anderson Gallery, Drake University, Des Moines, IA in early 2011. In 2009 Smith lectured at Temple University, Rome study abroad program, and was an artist-in-residence at ART342 in Fort Collins, CO. From 2008-2010, Smith was Assistant Professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.
3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series
The Rochester Art Center continually strives to engage the community members of all ages in the creation, contemplation, and appreciation of the visual arts. As a non-collecting institution, the Art Center focuses its efforts on presenting temporary exhibitions throughout the year featuring established local, national, and international artists, as well as “emerging” artists from diverse backgrounds working in a variety of media.
In the fall of 2004, the Rochester Art Center initiated an ongoing exhibition series devoted to emerging artists working in Minnesota - the 3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series. Founded on the principle of critical engagement with new practices in contemporary art, the Rochester Art Center has since presented 20 exhibitions, all reflecting the broad spectrum of concepts and working methodologies of young artists in the state. By fostering experimentation and utilizing the flexible conditions inherent in the Rochester Art Center’s Atrium Gallery, the exhibitions have provided unique opportunities for the artist, the institution and the viewer, allowing for innovative and expanded possibilities for the presentation, discussion, and understanding of contemporary art. The 3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series has been instrumental in introducing the work of young artists to Minnesota audiences, and has helped to foster the early careers of underrepresented and under recognized artists.
Rochester Art Center programs are made possible in part by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Major support is also provided by the McKnight Foundation and the City of Rochester.
Printed Gallery guide provided by Davies Printing Co., Rochester, MN