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Two birds with one stone

Two birds with one stone

Emily Sullivan Smith January 10, 2025

My work explores the push and pull between the natural world and human behavior. Implicit in the pieces is a balance between harmony and disharmony. Implicit also is how human convenience, privilege and personal choice might push against the benevolent orders of nature.

Perceptions opener two birds incopy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As an artist and assistant professor of art at UD, I use cultural and material knowledge from viewers to realize my ideas. Undertones of environmental activism invite viewers to infer their own relationship to the topics at hand. Individual experiences and beliefs play a role in unraveling and tying together meaning. Audiences are invited to see my labor as a surrogate for the labors of nature; several pieces took years to complete or were created with other artists working in community.

I pull from the global effects of humans on the natural world, from my own small piece of land where I foster organic gardens and from my awareness of the effects of my lifestyle.

Travel to environments from Iceland and the Pacific Northwest to the local grocery store all shape my work as does walking, deep looking and awareness of the effect of my senses on my psyche.


A version of this article appears in print in the Winter 2024-45 University of Dayton Magazine, Page 61. EXPLORE THE ISSUEMORE ONLINE

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