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Arts & Entertainment

More than Words

Local artist Sara Smith brings creativity and a whole lot of imagination to her work.

As a child growing up in a small town in Illinois, Sara Smith had always loved animals.

“My parents…recognized very early on that I was fascinated with animals. My Dad would tell me the name of every single animal that came into the backyard and if there was a toad, a kitten, a baby bunny, he would bring it in the house and he would have me sit down with it and observe it. I don’t know where that came from, I mean, a lot of little kids love animals, but I think that just didn’t go away for me.”

Her playful imagination and love of animals did not fade, as she grew older, instead it evolved into vivid, whimsical images of snow white polar bears, pink bunnies, birds nests and floating elephants on layered paper and canvas. 

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In her artwork, she creates worlds where ground and sky never meet, but exist as backdrops against images. She creates characters from what she sees, hears and feels.

“All of my pieces are inspired by some story I’ve heard, something someone has told me, a quote that I’ve picked up along the way, either in a book or a phrase that someone has used to describe something, said Smith.

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"I guess the artwork comes out of that phrase or word…then as soon as I’ve done the piece, I make the decision to actually include the words in it or to leave them off…and really that depends on when I get to that point in the artwork," she explained.

Smith began her creative career with an undergraduate degree in sculpture, though she says that her work was nothing like the pieces she creates on canvas, except that “there was a bit of whimsy to it.”

She moved on to doing cut ups from magazines, chalk pastels, amorphous figures. This changed when she began working at .

“It was a great job for me because it gave me a chance to teach people and help them with their art projects…I was only there for about six months and fell in love with the paper,” said Smith.

She started using more of the Italian paper in her work. “It’s something about the vintage-y quality of it that I really love, she said.

“I completely fell in love with the idea of wrapping canvas in the paper and then using that as a surface and adding layering and still being able to incorporate drawing into that because I actually love drawing more than any other art,” Smith explained.

A suggestion from a friend three years ago, pushed the burgeoning artist to participate in an art show at a hair salon in Chicago, where her art was on display for two months. She had eight months to complete 12 pieces.

“It was definitely my first shot at pulling together a body of work and then having it hung up.”

From there, she participated in the Sugarcreek Arts Festival in Bloomington, had a show at Tangy Sweet in Dupont Circle, and at Rock Candy, an interior store.

Her artistic journey in DC began a little over a year ago when she sold her first piece to a woman in New York, who viewed her work in Dupont Circle.

“Honestly, I think it was that painting that got me into using this little girl character. She was sort of interacting in the piece, similar to a way I would like to…falling asleep in birds nests and going back and forth between this feeling of security and this definite feeling of fear. Very similar to what you see in children’s books. I think I’m going back and forth between these two things, so there’s always an element of whimsical themes, but I also like to include dark things as well.”

She describes a piece about polar bears in a recent show: “It was from a story that was recently on NPR that was about Russian circus bears that were crossing the Tundra, and it was so cold that the bears went into hibernation…as I was listening to this I had this really distinct image of very blue, very snowy and a heap of bears comfortably sleeping.  It worked really well because I started going into this more circus theme, and as we all know, there’s a more dark aspect of circuses as well.”

At a recent opening of a newly designed showroom by Energy+Light+Control on O Street, Sara’s work was displayed on the walls including newer pieces she created this year.  Her work was also on display in the same space during a in January co-hosted by the Washington Humane Society.

Like many working artists, the 29-year-old finds that she has to balance a “9-to-5” with her art. But given a chance to work as a full-time artist, she hesitates.

“If I could do it full time, I absolutely would, but I think I’ve discovered that given the time to just do art, I can’t. I get a lot of my inspiration from people and their stories… so honestly the ideal situation would be something where I was interacting with people. That would be an amazing situation.”

“I sort of am a kid. I feel like I go back and forth between still being a total kid, and being in charge of stuff. And sometimes I step back and am a little confused about how it all comes together, but it seems to work.”

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