Portals & Pathways by Kerrie Smith

The Wildling Museum of Art and Nature has opened a new yearlong, site-specific installation featuring Santa Barbara-based artist Kerrie Smith. Portals & Pathways, designed for the Michele Kuelbs Tower Gallery, is on view April 2022 through February 2023.

Smith’s multisensory installation features flowing banners printed with Smith’s vivid abstract paintings inspired by daily walks along Santa Barbara’s More Mesa Park. Interspersed are sheer banners featuring personal poetry handstamped with wooden blocks carved by Smith. Circular “portals” hang from floor to ceiling adorned with Smith’s photography of local flora and fauna, as well her paintings and impressions of the trails that surround More Mesa. Ambient sounds of crashing waves, animal life and encounters recorded by Smith further invite visitors to take in the experience of walking along the trails as nature and human life collide and overlap.

“My 'banners’ rise out of the light and shadows that I witness through the seasons at various times of the day and early evenings. I recreate the ephemeral as organic nature-driven forms that reflect this shape-shifting landscape. These shapes, bounded by curves, mirror the constantly unfolding transitions of light and color. For me, they reveal optimism, expansiveness, creation, and the life force. I build my compositions with multiple layers and an array of techniques and tools as I seek a balance between the once tamed landscape and its original feral state…

My ‘mobiles,’ coupled with my paintings and photography, allow me to share so many diverse moments in time. I call these works ‘Portals and Pathways,’ something that is beyond an imagined landscape. The imagery is at once healing and beautiful, and slightly fantastic.”

Smith will continue to update the gallery with the changing seasons, transforming the space throughout 2022–2023, as part of the Wildling’s inaugural artist-in-residence program for the Michele Kuelbs Tower Gallery.