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"Everything about her—how she approaches her work, makes it and presents it—is meticulous,” Bekman says. “There’s lots of attention to detail, but it’s also not mechanical. And above all, her work is really stunning."
– Jen Bekman, 20x200.com & Jen Bekman for PDNedu One 2 Watch, 2008
"The bound volumes of periodicals featured in Mickey Smith's photographs loom up at us as gargantuan props in a bibliographic episode of The Twilight Zone. Not only are we confronted with hugely oversized material (well beyond even the largest shelved works at the library, the quartos and such), we also must confront the socio-linguistic implications of the spine labels. "LIFE" is a battered, marked-up, multi-color experience, while "ENDEAVOUR" is an imprecise, though correctable, command, bracketed by choice ("OR") and finality ("END"). (Isn't life like that, too?) Smith's subject matter is found in situ, un-tampered with, and entirely quotidian, yet she reveals and discovers new meanings in astounding confluences of library order and cultural chaos."
– George Slade, Artistic Director, Minnesota Center for Photography and Program Director MCP/McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowships for Photographers, 2007
"Smith’s ongoing project parallels a researcher’s pursuit to find the right book in the stacks. Her quest is to document these reservoirs of information in their concrete physical form, before they disappear completely to exist only in cyberspace. These images underscore the irony that these books, once revered as the ultimate containers of the thoughts and ideas of so many, will soon be available only to those with the electronic capability to access them.
Smith works in series, which she appropriately calls Collocations, creating single images, diptychs and triptychs. With the McKnight exhibition she has expanded her reach with a work titled Collocation No. 4 (TODAY), a mural-scaled work comprising 50 images of grey and yellow journals titled TODAY and TOMORROW installed, unframed, in a grid format. Given the prominence of monumental photographs in the last decade by likes of Andreas Gursky and others, it is not surprising to see Smith experiment. Scale has its own power and Smith has exploited it effectively. Viewing her individual images, we are Lilliputians, looking at books that are four and five feet tall. With Collocation No. 4, Smith has constructed a more realistic, physical relationship between viewer and books; it is as if we are in amongst the stacks, ourselves."
– Mason Riddle, Arts Critic, mnartists.org, 2007
"Mickey Smith explores history, knowledge, and a sense of place in her subtly evocative photographs of book spines. On timeless shelves the imprinted words float, connect, and repeat. These titles, omnipotent and authoritative, appear nostalgic and surprisingly fragile and threatened. The subject headings refer to the universal human experience while the context remains deeply rooted in the American, and specifically Mid-Western, sensibility. Smith's delicate and insightful images deliver a decidedly moving and forceful statement about power, life, and human connections."
– Kati Toivanen, Art & Art History Department at
UMKC, 2006
"Mickey Smith does what artists do. She finds beauty where no one has perceived it before... Her photography gives us an entirely new way to look at our familiar world."
– Patrick Coleman, Acquisition Librarian, Minnesota Historical Society, 2005
"Presented lovingly by Smith with nostalgia and an archeological eye for detail - as though she were recording an activity from an age gone by - through this work we are reminded of the speed of our rapidly changing world as we lose contact with tangible objects, and library collections and monetary transactions become transformed into digitized signals."
– Gulgun Kayim, Visible Fringe Director, 2005 |
