BELFAST, Maine — Susan Smith’s art first catches your eye and then your heart, as with “The Botany of Sacrifice,” her current show at Waterfall Arts in Belfast.
“Disturbingly imaginative,” one attendee wrote in the guestbook after seeing Smith’s vision of the dark side of large-scale agriculture, and that’s just what the Dover-Foxcroft artist and teacher had in mind. In the show, four giant paintings of so-called “superweeds,” created by the use of pesticides and resistant to chemicals, dominate the walls. Small bundles of botanical material, methodically wrapped and steamed in seawater for hours in her kitchen, have been placed at the base of the paintings.
“I call them the sacrifices,” she said. “I call the superweeds the gods.”
The idea for the art began a year ago, when Smith read an article about the oppression and exploitation of farm laborers — many of whom go into the fields to spray the pesticides by hand and pay for their work with their health.
“It’s talking about our need to have these absolutely perfect crops. Then meanwhile, behind the scenes, there are these farmworkers who are being exploited,” she said of the exhibit’s genesis. “They have to sacrifice so much to get us this stuff that is perfect.“
Smith wanted to find a way to translate her concerns into art without feeling like she was lecturing the viewer. That’s important to her, she said.
“The art I do now usually has some kind of social issue, but the trick for me is how do you talk about a social issue without it becoming propaganda or putting it in somebody’s face?” she said. “How do you create an experience? With ‘The Botany of Sacrifice,’ I wanted to create an experience so it could be more universal. You have to have a point of entry for anybody to wander into that space.”
In Belfast, the point of entry may be the bits of cloth she invites attendees to fill out with what they would like to sacrifice and then make bundles of their own. Another entry point is the idea of the bundles, which look like weird, charcoal-blackened artifacts, she said.
“The mystery of what’s inside has been fun, too,” she said, adding she periodically has unwrapped several.
Smith’s work in the exhibit is powerful, according to Martha Piscuskas of Waterfall Arts.
“I think it’s a really effective way for people to come in and make those connections,” she said. “Her work, to me, incorporates so many different aspects of existence: global ramifications, a personal journey. An issue grabs hold of her, and she digs deep. The result is that it’s not didactic work. It’s not obvious. You have to make the connections yourself.”
‘I never really thought of myself as an artist’
In talking to Smith, it is clear her personal journey is an important aspect of her art. It wasn’t always that way. Just a few years ago, the mom of two would never have referred to herself as an artist. She and her family had moved to rural Maine from Austin, Texas, so her husband could pursue graduate work in English at the University of Maine.
“I came to Maine with a background in landscaping, then planted myself to where it seems to snow most of the year,” she said. “It was a very difficult adjustment.”
She worked seasonally as a landscaper in Maine until one day eight years ago, when she was nagging her eldest daughter to work on her college application essay.
“She challenged me to do the same,” Smith, said. “I had barely touched on college. I’d started a family. I made stuff, but I never really thought of myself as an artist.”
Smith accepted her daughter’s challenge and sent her essay to the University of Maine. When she was accepted, her first response was to laugh, assuming higher education was no longer in her cards. Then she decided she might as well take a drawing course.
“I was certain that it would be this total flop, and it wasn’t. It was great. And it seemed like this was what I should be doing,” she said. “I took the math, the science, everything, and did it while I sometimes had two jobs. It was just a long process, but one thing led to another. I finished the Bachelor of Fine Arts. It felt like that was not a closure — it was a beginning. Doors were starting to open I never thought would open. I mean, I was in Dover-Foxcroft, digging in the dirt. I never thought I’d be sitting here, sharing my art with people.”
It took her a while, but the former seasonal landscaper has finally gotten comfortable with the title of artist. She teaches in the Master of Fine Art program in intermedia at the University of Maine and is the coordinator of the Lord Hall Gallery on campus.
“Everything I do now is associated with the process of art,” she said. “Most of my spare time is spent kind of obsessively thinking about art. It’s like it has become art as a life.”
But that doesn’t mean she has settled into a routine or that she has stopped looking for what’s next.
“I kind of have a restlessness that’s always surfacing that helps always push art in other directions,” Smith said. “I feel like I’m always searching for that home, pushing and searching. Will this work? Is this the thing? Is this my home? Is this where I belong? The personality I have, I guess, is not quite settled. … My self-doubt is as thick as it ever was, but there’s also this urgency to make whatever the next thing is.”
Piscuskas said that whatever the thing might be, it’s likely to be worth a look.
“It’s gorgeous work. It’s really stunning,” she said. “I hope a lot of people come to see it, and that she gets to keep making work for a long time.”
“The Botany of Sacrifice” is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday through Nov. 25 at Waterfall Arts, 256 High St., Belfast. For more information, call 338-2222 or visit waterfallarts.org.