Defying the Laws

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to Sarah Smelser’s exhibition Defying the Laws.

Sarah Smelser has been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center; Franz Masereel Center, Artica Bilbao, Kala Art Institute, Jentel Artist Residency, Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, Anchor Graphics, Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Remarque, Contemporary Print Media Research Center, and Tamarind Institute. Her monotypes have been featured in a variety of solo, invitational, and juried exhibitions. She further serves as a professor in the Wonsook Kim School of Art at Illinois State University in Normal, IL.

In Defying the Laws, Smelser attempts to defy the laws of logic, reason, and gravity through her artwork, which delves into the solitude and isolation experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Born from the unwieldy, off-kilter sense of reality the world faced during the pandemic, Smelser’s collection serves as the manifestation of her coping process. Amidst overwhelming confusion and horror, Smelser found that the concentration and flow of her work gave her something to control, rules she could make and break within the confines of a makeshift mental space. 

Since 2020, she has continued to return to and experiment with this body of work, infusing elements of drawing, collage, and print techniques. Smelser emphasizes her work’s distinct approaches to place, landscape, and cityscape and her use of repetition, balance, unitization, and chunking juxtaposed with solid, heavy, emphatic gestures. This experimental collection expresses the coexistence of certainty and uncertainty, planning and happenstance. 

Defying Laws will be exhibited in the Second Floor Atrium Gallery of the Art Center.