Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow | Audrey Zelia Smith & Chan Bird

September 6-8, 2019

This is the last GEORGIA show of the year! Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow is a show curated by Sommer Browning and features the work of Audrey Zelia Smith and Chan Bird.

This show is up for one weekend only with a special sound performance during the opening reception by Eric Baus.

Hours
Friday, September 6 | Opening Reception | 6-9 | sound performance by Eric Baus at 8pm
Saturday, September 7 | Open hours | 1-5
Sunday, September 8 | Open hours | 1-5

I often think about why the word for a painting is the same word as the act of painting; that a poem is not called a poeming, a film which trucks in presence and duration is not called a filming. I think about this when I look at Audrey Zelia Smith’s and Chan Bird’s work. To me, their work is as much about the painting as it is about the painting. Robert Duncan, in his poem “Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow,” gets damn close to the same thing. It’s more than merging the act with the resulting object. And it’s more than the act evidenced in the object. It’s a third thing. It’s a state. That these works paint a state of being, maybe the state we’re in when we look at art. A meadow can be a meditation; I am always in one meadow or another.

”My work is inspired by the way that painting makes me feel - alone but not lonely, not needing anything but that moment. My paintings may be about peace, the feeling of home, a specific person in my life, death, the space to be alone, a place of being loved and protected. I paint to be able to process my emotions. I use meditation as a tool to ground myself before I paint or do anything that's hard or that makes me nervous and a lot of my work is an exploration of things I see or imagine when I meditate.” Audrey Zelia Smith

Chan Bird is an artist native to Colorado whose work is often influenced by the human condition. Drawing inspiration from color psychology, emotions, poetic form, and through working in small scale, Chan’s hope is to draw the viewer in close and to pay attention to minimalist detail and deep feelings. Each piece in this series tells a story of love, loss, longing, and personal growth.

Eric Baus is the author of five books of poetry: The Tranquilized Tongue, (City Lights 2014), Scared Text, winner of the Colorado Prize for Poetry (Center for Literary Publishing, 2011), Tuned Droves (Octopus Books, 2009), and The To Sound, winner of the Verse Prize (Wave Books, 2004). He is a graduate of the PhD program in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Denver as well as the MFA program for poets and writers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He teaches literature and creative writing at Regis University’s Mile High MFA program in Denver.

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