Alexis Smith at Weisman Museum at Pepperdine

Past Lives is the aptly named collaboration between artist Alexis Smith and poet Amy Gerstler. The 1989 installation based on an elementary school classroom features a large blackboard with cursive sentences scrolled in chalk. Each phrase, composed by Gerstler, is a possible summary of a child’s future life and each could seem credible or dubious: “Came to literature late.” Or “His journey towards anarchy was a long one.”

Alexis Smith and Amy Gerstler, Past Lives, 1989, mixed media installation, courtesy of the artist and Honor Fraser Gallery. Photograph by Alan Shaffer.

Dozens of small chairs that Smith had collected for years from swap meets and yard sales stand around the large room, each manifesting a distinct personality: rockers, canvas deck chairs, leather tub chairs, chairs made of wicker, wood and painted metal. A penmanship chart of the alphabet is posted near the ceiling and walls are partially painted institutional green. Like the blackboard, there are additional poetic wall texts by Gerstler that question and query.

Alexis Smith, A Girl With Brains Ought To..., 1983, Mixed media collage, 23 x 22 x 1 in. Photo by Brian Forrest, courtesy of Honor Fraser Gallery

Yet, Smith’s entire enterprise has been about the ways in which history is transmitted and received, the random decisions that deem some aspects of culture popular, others elite, and how those designations intersect with one another. These issues are germaine to discussions today.

Alexis Smith, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, 1982, Mixed media collage, 19 x 16 x 2 in.Photo by Brian Forrest, courtesy of Honor Fraser Gallery

This exhibition clarifies her conceptual consistency within the variety of her work. The earliest pieces in this show are typewritten phrases decorated with tiny bits of collage and framed in plexiglas boxes. They are very much in keeping with the emphasis on content over form that drove information age art of the 1970s. But Smith quickly got a handle on her own vocabulary, her droll, double-edged quotations that ricochet off the adjacent imagery. Found and custom-made frames dramatize the impact and pave the way for her architecturally-scaled installations, temporary or permanent, including the vast terrazzo floor of the L.A. Convention Center.

Alexis Smith, High Society, 2013, mixed media collage, courtesy of the artist and Honor Fraser Gallery. Photograph by Alan Shaffer.

pepperdine.edu/museum.

Alexis Smith, Daily Planet, 1986, Mixed media collage, Panel 1: 28 1/8 x 52 1/4 in., Panel 2: 28 1/8 X 51 1/8 in. Photo by Brian Forrest, courtesy of Honor Fraser Gallery