[.ca] All Creatures Great and Small: New Work (ISBN 3908247047)

From Amazon.com:
American artist Kiki Smith first received international attention in the 1980s with her sculptures and drawings of the human body. Since the beginning of the 1990s, however, she has expanded her visual vocabulary to include works that portray the larger natural world and its phenomena, such as plants and animals, stars and planets. The daughter of minimalist artist Tony Smith, she has drawn a good deal of her inspiration from the techniques and materials of past epochs, especially from traditions within the decorative arts-and-crafts movements of various world cultures. She uses a wide variety of lush and often ephemeral materials to create her pieces--bronze, gold, silver, paper, wax, glass, felt, ceramics, video, and neon among them. And she combines figuration and abstraction to explore such themes as the vulnerability and reanimation of that which is lost or dead. Smith's pieces, which draw on fables, myths, fairy tales, dreams, and her own Catholic spirituality, evoke in viewers contemplation and a desire for greater perception. Kiki Smith: All Creatures Great and Small brings together works from different periods of Smith's production over the past two decades. At 140 pages, this small, elegant hardcover (approximately eight by six inches) includes 54 color reproductions and a poetic text by Carsten Ahrens. --A.C. Smith

probably not on the bookstore shelf, but it should be:
This hardback is small for an art book (measures 6 in. wide by 8 in. long), but it is packed with full-color plates of Smith's work. The book seems to have been published in connection with an exhibition at the Kestner Gesellschaft in Germany. The plates include details and installation shots from what appears to have been a large and fairly comprehensive one-person show. Smith's work is elegant and direct, wide-ranging in subject but closely related in meaning. In his essay, Carsten Ahrens states "Kiki Smith has ....continually hinted at the close proximity between art and the ideas of Catholicism, which are similar in their belief in the spiritual potential of the physical." Though I found most of the essay difficult to digest, I consider that statement a gem. To me, Smith's art is about the frail, feeling, physical world and the force of life itself. The back of the book features a selection of Smith's iris prints. I was delighted to discover these, as I was unaware that Smith does work in photography. I think they are quite nice, and I am impressed that she is able to work in such a range of mediums. Though I do not consider the book a substitute for a monograph, it is an excellent resource. One star deducted for photo quality--well-composed but occasionally fuzzy.

Simply beautiful:
Kiki Smith's work may seem impossible to document in book form but this book does a terrific job of conveying the power and delicacy of her art. The reproductions are gorgeous, and the essay is extremely readable. A must for any contemporary art book collection!

Kiki Smith is the Neil Young of the art world:
Prolific and out on her own sense of self Kiki Smith is jaunting into areas both powerful and perplexing. She's not who you think she is.