Beej Nierengarten-Smith

My artistic life has always centered on people and their relationship to ideas that are meaningful in their lives. I search for cultural images from various geographic regions and distill selective images into layered expressions of visual emotion. This exhibition Landscapes of Desire with its appropriated cultural images have stories to tell, emotions to evoke and restate their content in terms of the 21st century.

I work on paper with printmaking as a basis creating a unique series of thought and expression in a series that begins with a skeletal iconic image and I build upon it until the visual narrative is complete. The Up in the Air series brings together the feeling of the industrial revolution bracketed by English manners such as a picnic in the clouds. These works merge ballooning events with the notion of a power beneath (riding on an elephant) and a power above. The appropriated Chine colle’ images come from coloured lanternslides popular in England during the 19th century.

After several visits to Peru, I selected the mesmerizing images of the country as captured by the photographer Martin Chambe from 1920 to 1950. It is difficult to believe that such an enlighten population as the indigenous Peruvians should have been so decimated by the Spanish. Chambe’s sensitive photographs as icons for my Peruvian series represent my love of the country and the tragedy inflicted upon its marvelous people.

The Orient has always fascinated me. The Cathay works and Landscapes of Desire created from lithographs and etchings with recent paper cut images from China and fine papers from Japan also contain appropriated Chinese erotic drawings from the 16th century which were originally small in scale.

In the Cathay works, I created fantasy landscapes, while the Landscapes of Desire based eroticism brings together the ying and yang of the male and female nude. The surfaces of these works are contemporary; Chinese paper cuts that relate to our current cultural fascination with the tattoo now so famously popular. The standards of female beauty centered on fine foot binding. The juxtaposition of contemporary boots with their stiletto heels is not so far removed from the 16th century.

To some degree the centuries pass while geography and iconic images from culture to culture continue to speak to the viewer and this exhibition rearranges our sense of appreciation.

CURRENT PROFESSIONAL ART and MUSEUMS

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