A very unique art exhibit is coming to the Art Gallery of Golden, and you are invited to make your own creations from it.
Natasha Smith presents her exhibit, Child’s Play at the artist’s reception on Friday, September 6.
Child’s Play dives deeper into Smith’s fascination with the development of visual language, focusing on the act of play as one of the triggers for creativity and visual language.
“This is not an exhibit in the normal sense of the word,” said Kicking Horse Culture executive director Bill Usher. “It’s an interactive exhibit.”
The piece features a set of blocks painted by Smith, arranged in a frame that people are invited to come and rearrange. Then, they can take pictures and share their own creations.
“The component is, people will come in, move these blocks around to create a new image that they like,” Usher explained.
Smith states that she is excited to see what results come from breaking down traditional gallery conventions by asking viewers to touch and move the artworks, and she hopes to discover how people interact with her work when they are encouraged to play.
Once people rearrange the work and are happy with their creation, they can take a photo and post to Instagram @ChildsPlayExhibit and on Facebook at Child’s Play Exhibit, using the hashtags #childsplay, #golden, and #kickinghorseculture. Photos can also be e-mailed to natashasmithartist@gmail.com. The community’s creations will be collected and shared to live on after the show.
“A lot of it is based, for her, on the research she’s done on children’s illustrations and drawing,” Usher said. “It’s really interesting to see an artist who has stayed focused, and how that develops.”
In Child’s Play, Smith references imagery and research of Rhoda Kellogg that suggests expressive gestures of infants evolve from basic scribbles into consistent scribbles. Every child discovers a mode of symbolization, which follows the same evolution of Child’s Play.
