Isolated Incidents — Rachel L. Smith

ISOLATED ICIDENTS
Holland Project Gallery, Reno, NV
August 12 - 20, 2013

Virago Gallery (formerly Twilight Gallery), Seattle, WA
January 8 - February 5, 2014

Isolated Incidents is a collaborative exhibition between sisters, Rachel and Stephanie Smith, exploring the themes of isolation and the transformations that can occur within situations or feelings that produce seclusion. Rachel worked at a State Penitentiary as a teacher and Stephanie worked at the Walla Walla Foundry as a woodworker. While working at these jobs they found themselves in completely new work settings with situations that caused them to face their own versions of isolations as they relate to the work they were doing and the people they worked with. The collaboration encompasses the isolation of the prison environment and the labor-intensive atmosphere of the foundry where workers craft million-dollar contemporary artwork for artists of the 21st century. Through these two very different experiences they have been faced with physical, mental and emotional exhaustion. Yet it is only through these challenges that they are able to confront realities of their culture and evaluate their relevancy in society at large and within the art world.

Working with convicts in prison allowed Rachel to recognize that the crimes that these men have committed are not the single defining factor of who they are as people and that they still deserve to be treated like human beings. Exposing students in prison to the arts has been an eye opening experience in realizing that all people no matter their circumstances should have access to the transformative power of the arts. Stephanie had to deal with the isolating experience of creating artwork with a team of skilled craftspeople who have little to no conceptual or stylistic control over what they are creating. Her transformative experience lies within the realization that the hands of the skilled laborers making the art itself are just as crucially relevant as the artists they are making the work for. In both situations they have had to reconcile certain isolating factors about their situations by remaining open and allowing preconceived notions and initial judgments to transform into more profound understanding.

Isolated Incidents uses a combination of mixed media/collage and an interactive installation to consider these ideas. The collages are diptychs representing visual and textual conversations that have been manipulated to show connections between disparate thoughts. Each piece in isolation contains a conversation on its own, but the two pieces together transform the work into a larger dialogue. The installation Always Have An Escape Plan develops meaning over the course of the exhibition as the viewers become active participants of the artwork itself. Art and artists, like anything else, can be isolated and create isolating experiences and this show aims to break the division between artists, art, and the viewer by asking them to collaborate and transform with us.