Sarah Smelser: Intimate, Personal, Social and Public

Runs through 09/28/2019.

Opening reception: Friday, September 6th, 5-8pm

Through September 28th

“Intimate,” “Personal,” “Social,” and “Public” refer to American Anthropologist Edward T. Hall’s interpersonal distances of man. Hall studied cultural perceptions of space, taught in several universities around the country, and spent the last part of his life in Santa Fe, NM. My work is not about his research, but I am borrowing his language to present a group of works that examine perceptions and feelings of wonder, discomfort, and familiarity one can have in varied locations. My interest in place, space, and landscape comes not only from the formal tendencies in my work, but also from my experiences traveling in the United States and abroad, relocating, and working at residencies in New York, Chicago, Albuquerque, Vermont, Wyoming, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Ireland, and my hometown of Berkeley, CA. The motion of travel, the grandeur and subtlety of geography, and feelings of displacement are some of the ideas I consider as I work. Forms relate, prompt order, react to each other, and initiate private conversations.