Featured Artist: Sarah V. Smith

Mystical Dioramas

By Sarah Smith
QuailBellMagazine.com

My work deals with a story which I have created through piecing together ideas from my subconscious. I bring these ideas into my studies and arrange them to create a narrative. I study my narrative through making dioramas and figures which interact. Each final piece is a series of prints which are photographs of the set that I have used to further my narrative. The inspiration for my work comes from a deep-rooted interest in mysticism created by my subconscious.

I include almost all media in my studies, but sculpture is the most important aspect. Over the course of getting to know my concentration, I've had to learn several ways of sculpt, light, and photograph my work. While constructing the set and figures dictates the meaning of each series, color and lighting also play a vital role in properly communicating the mood of the work. I carefully light each set as if I were lighting for a movie scene. The color in each piece is dependent more on lighting to look right than its actual surface. The scale of my work is small but I use this aspect of my work to push and pull on the viewer’s suspended belief. To push their belief that the photograph was taken from a real setting is to question how close the events happening in the narrative connect to our lives. To pull away their belief in the setting is to show the level of intimacy in which I handcrafted each figure and set.

I also include heavy theme in my work. I explore the effects of death, gender identity, and overall mysticism surrounding my thoughts on metaphysics and the supernatural. I believe these subjects are important to explore because our culture often considers them taboo, but the subconscious readily addresses them in times of stress and insecurity. 

Read our previous interview with Smith here.