Kiki Smith with Bill Goldston

DEC 19-JAN 20 | Critics Page

In less than an hour I was smitten by Kiki and knew this creative person had to make prints at ULAE. She had already acknowledged she knew that I was “that guy that made prints on Long Island.” So I invited her to come to the studio. I have never met an artist or person like Kiki Smith and to this day my love and admiration for her continues to grow. I am grateful she agreed to answer my questions.

KIKI SMITH:
Below the Horizon

By Pac Pobric

JUNE 2018 | ArtSeen

One hundred and thirty-two years ago, the leaders of Kihal Adath Jeshurun (“People’s Congregation of the Just”) bought three lots on a narrow street in lower Manhattan surrounded by tenements crowded with Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. The lots contained only a humble group of wooden row houses, but standing on that street in 1886, they imagined the space filled by a synagogue worthy of the shuls of Paris or Berlin—one that could inspire the impoverished Jews of New York and offer them a place for respite and reflection. Less than a year later, on a budget of $92,000, they completed the synagogue at Eldridge Street, a soaring, neo-Moorish temple and at once the tallest building in the neighborhood, capped by finials with the Star of David.