This is a juried exhibition of members of the Los Angeles Printmaking Society.  This exhibition explores the stunning, uncomfortable and sometimes unpleasant aspects of the ruins of our contemporary society.  Julie Brown Smith will be exhibiting her linocut entitled, I see spring through fogged windows, a piece which has been chosen to represent her statement below:

My work, I see spring through fogged windows, is a statement about the contemporary ruin of our culture today, and the loss of tradition and classical cultural values caused by our obsession with our own reflection, and the rampant consumerism destroying our society. 

This is a portrait of our need to commercialize our experiences.  Inside the glass of this store window is a display of a traditional ballet costume, hung on a mannequin for passersby to view as though it were in a vitrine in a museum.  It has become an artifact of classicism, displayed in a narcissistic environment.  The costume and the toe shoes are a symbol of the past, relics, displayed in a static, unmoving way, frozen behind the glass window. 

The window itself plays a part, reflecting the contemporary outside world, imposing these reflections upon the classical form, distorting our view, and creating a view of the contemporary ruin that is both inside and outside the glass, as it is both internalized and externalized within and without each of us.

The figure on the left is a reflection of the viewer, on the outside looking in, contemplating the past, and being influenced by the present, becoming a part of this ruin by being a part of the reflection of these contemporary times.

This is the modern museum, the store window.  We look to these windows to fulfill our dreams, to answer our questions, to see ourselves and check on the way we look to others.  This window adds the dimension of the past, causing us to look deeper beyond the reflections and deeper into ourselves, to decide what is valuable in our society, and to judge what is indeed the contemporary ruin: whether the past is what is actually lost, or whether it is truly the present that is the ruin, ourselves a dim reflection, overlaid on a past that has a much deeper foundation, and that will remain vital long after our society has self-destructed.