Wildcat West

Alison Smith is an interdisciplinary storyteller, singer and naturalist, whose installations and performances engage the senses.  At once lustful and restrained, autobiographical and fantastical, wild and plotted, her work is alive: breathing and bleeding.  Her portraits are a reunion of souls.  Her landscapes run wildly all over the west, always coming home to the Bay.  In her current piece, Sang Song (bloodsong), fine art pieces combine with collected earth pigments, bones, wood, plant matter, charged artifacts, and objects burned and broken to form layered collections of memory.  These collections transform rooms into soundtracked laboratories, altars, bedrooms and bars, whose doorways drop off into the dark beneath all phases of the moon.  

Balancing solitary artistic quests with community work, Alison is committed to her personal vision, social and environmental justice and innovative learning for all. In addition to full time artistic practice, Alison is a certified Holistic Massage Therapist and Health Practitioner and movement facilitator, dedicatedly strengthening her community through teaching. She has provided arts education to elementary and high school students in the East Bay Area since 2002.  She was a teaching assistant at The Nova Studio in Richmond, California for seven years, supporting education in homemade body products and herbal medicine making with entrepreneurs of all ages.  She teaches consciousness based art practice at yoga retreats.  She has been a critique panelist at Berkeley City College and an interdisciplinary guest lecturer at California College of the Arts.  She is actively involved with the Northern California Fibershed, working with farmers, fiber artists and natural dyers to produce sustainable art in community. 

Alison is a fourth generation Bay Area native raised and living on occupied Ohlone/Chochenyo land in El Cerrito, CA.  She studied Film writing/Production and Studio Art at College of Marin; Fine Art at California Institute of the Arts; worked at Amsterdam Art in Berkeley; received her BA in Studio Art and Book Arts from Mills College; and MFA in Arts and Consciousness from John F. Kennedy University. She has certifications in Holistic Massage Therapy, Spa Services and Holistic Health from The World School, and a 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training from Experience Alaya.  She has studied natural perfumery at Aftelier Perfumes, plant and clay dyeing with Fibershed, and permaculture at Natura Institute.