Complements: eloquence of small objects
Patricia Smith reveals the universal within the local. She takes down the walls of mystery and guides us towards the everyday joys of life, all the time preserving the dignity of objects and, by extension, the dignity of our imaginations.
Beatrix Ost—artist, author, ambassador of peace, fashion icon and designer
Bliss is a comet. First fire, then a tail, then you never forget.
You silly boy who feels clever to be playing an instrument as fine as I am. I will accommodate, and build your skill.
Kisses delayed burst like fermented fruit, or dry to dust.
Patricia Smith reveals the universal within the local. She takes down the walls of mystery and guides us towards the everyday joys of life, all the time preserving the dignity of objects and, by extension, the dignity of our imaginations.
Colum McCann—author of NYT best-sellers Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin
The strange little fish, weary of being teased, left school to swim in oceans of silk and dreams.
Wisteria salvaged his melancholy.
Bra on a branch, flower in a frame, a spider...hmmm?
This wondrous book is a study of the elegance, poignance, beauty, and the menace of everyday things we use that might outlast us and reveal our secrets. Each photograph reveals the tension between the stuff and the story, the mundane and the epic, the ethereal and the practical. Patricia Z. Smith invites us into an unforgettable conversation between what lives, what dies, and what stays behind, by honoring the resilience of everyday objects that hold the complex truths of our humanity.
Karen Zacarias—award-winning playwright, “…top ten produced playwrights in U.S.” (American Theater Magazine)
2021 US Artist Fellow
Their feet were molded by crushing their bones and souls. When the girls screamed, their mouths were bound too.
She was tired of being seen only for her beauty and, as a maid, preferred to discover what beauty she had in the privacy of her chambers. She gave the barnyard gander, hopelessly in love, her earring and asked him to stand in for her. People see what they expect to see.
When Mystery turns its gaze on you, you will be shot through. In that instant you will see terrifying grandeur as it claims you.
Patricia Smith’s photographs are like dreams to be unpacked. Her weird, mysterious, and intriguing images are archetypal and symbolic and, as are real objects, imbued with history and memory. With a background or sentence she wrote, the objects can fascinate or touch something deep inside the viewer, as well as draw them to the aesthetics of the compositions. Works of art, works of meaning!
Jean Shinoda Bolen MD—Jungian analyst, psychiatrist, author of 13 books, feminine activist
You believe I am innocuous, a glass trick, inert as a handmade marble, but you are wrong. I am looking at you, and I make you what I see.
Destruction erodes souls through generations.
Our blood stained the snow red at Wounded Knee, but do not be proud. The ground remembers us, we will never die.
COMPLEMENTS is a book to be seen not only with the eye but with the mind, gut, heart, and soul. It shows the world is, indeed, “good.” The Creator would surely place her/his imprimatur on this glorious book.
Reverend Richard E. Oliver, D.D.—retired minister, potter
Aging flowers, rattler’s rattle, honeycomb—warning and sweetness.
Her heart quickened as the pull of the Great Mystery grew. How wondrous it must be to be so strong! Cheese? A moon of her own?
God does not play dice. Wanna bet?