Southern Indiana Living Magazine - Jan / Feb 2023

Artist Spotlight
A Quiet Intensity
Corydon Artist Wendi Smith champions the natural world
Story by Judy Cato
Photos by Lorraine Hughes
Less than a block from the historic
Cedar Hill Cemetery in
Corydon, the studio and home
of mixed media artist Wendi
Smith blends into the bordering hillside
and treetop canopy like some
dreamy treehouse. Smith, at 70, navigates
the hill with ease, walking daily
farther up the hill to the cemetery.
“It is a fascinating place,” Smith
said of Cedar Hill. “The old gravestones
are full of history and symbolic
art. I also find actual objects there
– feathers, insect wings, snakeskins,
animal bones, twigs – which become
part of my art.”
Smith’s recent solo show, Elegy,
at Garner Narrative Art Gallery in
Louisville (Sept. 3–Oct. 10, 2021) was
inspired, at least in part, by her walks
at Cedar Hill. As the show’s title suggests,
it was intended as a poem or
song for the dead: the artworks were
tombs of insects, birds and various
other nonhuman species.
One of the works for this show,
Wishbone Reliquary, is a box with an
inside chamber where relics of the
dead – a wishbone, a squirrel tail,
butterfly wings and more – are arranged,
each in their own separate
compartment. On the outside of the
box, Smith has painted precise replicas
of the contents.
22 • Jan/Feb 2023 • Southern Indiana Living
“When I was in art school in
the early ’70s, photorealism was in
vogue,” Smith said. “I was instructed
to make a painting with photographic
accuracy and no hint of self-expression.
This did not always suit me.”
At one level, this work is a pun:
The viewer can compare the original
objects to Smith’s paintings of them.
“Viewers can see how ‘correctly’ I
paint. My skill is out of the box,”
Smith quipped.
The deeper meaning of the
work is a very personal expression of
Smith’s quiet, but intense, reverence
for the natural world. She explained
her intention: “Nature provides so
much of the beauty and wonder of
our existence that we abuse and ignore
it at our peril. The death of an
insect or bird, as children instinctively
feel, can be a loss so huge that
they will give it a burial ceremony to
grieve the loss of so much joy. These
works are an attempt to make sacred
the tombs of turtles and birds.”
Technically, the boxes in the Elegy
exhibit are low color and reduced
pattern to lend solemnity to the contents.
Smith used metal leaf – a thin
foil used for gilding – as a nod to historic
reliquaries and to give them a
formal feel.
In her most recent works – portable
shrines for endangered or threatened
wildlife – the outsides of the
boxes are left unfinished and must be
opened to reveal the contents: painted
images of monarchs, bumblebees,
whooping cranes, Indochinese tigers
and more.
“Opening these shrines brings
the expectation of something valuable,”
Smith said. “We keep our treasures
in boxes and vaults. Natural
treasures are often seen as less valuable
– something our eyes pass over
without thought – because they are
so accessible. Placing them in closed
shrines changes the perception.”
The title of one of these shrines,
Missal, suggests the work might be
approached as if it were a book of
devotions. The viewer opens the unadorned
wood box to find Smith’s
painting of one of nature’s most glorious
works of art: monarch wings,
with their natural geometric shapes,
vivid orange colors, intricate veins,
spotted borders, all designed as a
beacon for a mate, a camouflage and
a warning to predators. The work
seems to invite the viewer to contemplate
this fragile and threatened
beauty as a revelation.
Ceremonial and ritual objects,
such as shrines, missals and reliquaries,
have been important components