ALEXIS SMITH R TIST

I’ll say a word and I want you to tell me the first thing that pops into your head.

For Alexis Smith, in the beginning was the word, a collection of characters with the power to signify. And her investment in words has resulted in visual verbal returns. For example, there’s Jane. In 1985, the allusionary power of these four letters in this sequence led Smith to some 30 collages composed around them. Jane: slang for a woman; a conveyor of Hollywood allure—Jayne Mansfield, Jane Russell; a popular myth, often paired with another—Tarzan and Jane, Dick and Jane, Calamity Jane and Deadwood Dick; a

print February 1982

“Young Turks”

This recent exhibition may be one of the first to be named after a film. Los Angeles has been rife with “Turkomania,” an electrical storm of media attention drawn to Stephen Seemayer’s two-hour Young Turks, featuring 13 artists: Bob & Bob (Francis Shishim and Paul Velick), Linda Burnham, James Croak, Woods Davy, Eric (Randy) Johnsen, Marc Kreisel, Jon Peterson, Monique Safford, John Schroeder, Coleen Sterritt, Andrew Wilf, and Seemayer himself. Essentially Young Turks is a home movie, a series of brief celluloid portraits of Seemayer’s friends strung together without pretense to objectivity.