The one thing I want to make clear, is that my agenda is not political. Having said that, I also am a great believer that art should not happen in a vacuum. I don’t believe in chamber art. I don’t see that as a function of art. I think art connects us to the world.
“I will paint people forever, as they are always important to me. But my fascination with inanimate objects and the stories they tell bring me back to a different time when it makes me move into the mindset of a designer or inventor who thought with 1920 references. Old glass bottles, iconography, out-of-date sewing machines, their shapes and how they work stimulate me to see the world with fresh perceptions.”
The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States is a multi-genre collection of poems, short stories, essays, memoir, novel excerpts, and creative nonfiction. The book showcases writers who render a multiplicity of experiences as refugees from the wars of the 1980s to those who barely remember the homeland, or who were born in el norte.
Created over an almost 20-year span and drawing from 18 bodies of work, this is the first published monograph of Aline Smithson’s work and features her defining series Arrangement in Green and Black: Portrait of the Photographer’s Mother. From black-and-white to hand-painted photographs, this collection of portraits combines humor and family to create a universal expression of motherhood, to capture the essence of childhood, and to examine created realities, the poignancy of childhood, and the pathos of aging and relationships.
