Friday night is the opening reception for the Smith Farm Show. I'm excited to be showing in such a beautiful new gallery, with two such gifted artists and with such a meaningful mission.

Below is the curators statement for the Smith Farm show, curated by Lillian Fitzgerald.

This exhibit Immersed in the Natural World gives us a glimpse into three artist’s personal journeys. Elizabeth Burger, Tai Hwa Goh and Novie Trump create images inspired from nature. Each artist arrives at the work from a unique direction, with clearly distinct motivations. There is an immediacy and presence in the work on exhibit. It is rich in not only as an exploration of imagery and scale but also natural materials, paper, wax, clay.

Elizabeth Burger works with materials found in her rural environment, this gives her to an intense awareness of things that live and die on the land. Using algae, seedpods, roots, reeds, thorn bushes and other natural materials, she creates a series of animal/plant hybrids that are inspired by nature. Each of Ms. Burger’s works on exhibit seems to embody life or death. Contrast Apart , three immense beautiful forms that feel as if they are slowly decaying before our eyes, with her series of eighteen of Pod pieces that positively dance with life. Twisted moves in yet another direction. Created from plastic and paper pulp, it’s orange color and obvious reference to plastic construction barricades turns commonly discarded materials into an incandescent work of art.


Tai Hwa Goh’s art is deeply rooted in nature. She sees making art as the effort to search for her identity, and her art work is the diary recording her experiences. The process of layering tissue thin papers and wax breathes an air of mystery to her work, it reveals and at the same time obscures. The imagery, like the titles are delicately ominous – Suspicious Seeds, Lull, Suspicious Spore. The work has a lovely intimate scale and luminous transparent quality to the color.


Novie Trump’s art is very much about the tenacity of nature. It is informed by ancient myths and inspired by her travel to Ireland, Wales and the Galapagos Islands. Her formal training as an archeologist and love of relics and past civilizations is a great influence on her work.
The poetry in her work, the relationships of light and dark, loss and hope, death and rebirth are explored using rough hewn clay tablets, black birds, delicate egg shells, bones.

In an installation created for this exhibit she describes the Temple of the Phoenix. This work “evokes a sacred place of ritual. A ring of pillars inspired by ancient temples and burned trees encircles a nest of blackened bones, which holds a luminous ivory egg. A fierce bird perched on one of the pillars watches over the egg, which waits to be born. In this piece, iconic images of death are deliberately juxtaposed with images of birth to convey the inevitable cycle of life.”


For more information visit www.SmithFarm.com/gallery.
phone: 202.483.8600
1632 U Street NW Washington DC 20009
Reception 5:30 - 8pm
Regular Gallery Hours will be Wednesday-Friday 11AM-5PM, Saturday 11AM-3PM
and by appointment.