Alexis Smith (artist)

[11] She drew elements for her collages from pop culture, movies, romance novels, magazines, and advertising,[12] as well as the fiction and nonfiction works of a wide range of writers including Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, Thomas Mann, and Raymond Chandler.

[4][15] The objects used in Smith's works were commonly found on the street, at garage sales, thrift stores, and swap meets, and via gifts and chance encounters.

[12] Large-scale public works include Snake Path (1992), a 560-foot-long inlaid slate path for the Stuart Collection at UC San Diego, terrazzo floors for the Los Angeles Convention Center and the Schottenstein Sports Arena at Ohio State University,[16] and a multimedia collage installation "Taste" in the Restaurant at the Getty Center.

[17] Snake Path makes several references to biblical conflict between innocence and knowledge as the installation is a footpath in the form of a serpent surrounding a "garden of Eden".

[19] Smith collaborated with Poet Amy Gerstler on several installations, including "Past Lives" at the Santa Monica Museum of Art.

The majority of Smith's work in this exhibit consists of a landscape portrait painted by an amateur with romantic subjects in the scenes of sailing ships, forests, tropical islands, desert sunsets, bridges, barns, and city streets.

Smith also included one or two small items such as a ruler, straw hat, crushed beer can, or key chain in most of these works in order to contradict the setting of the painting.

There are also quotes by Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau printed on the gallery walls which further speak to the subject matter of Smith's paintings.

Smith examined American culture of the 1940s and 1950s by combining images and texts from the time period such as postcards, road maps, movie stills, and advertising art into witty statements.