Smith counts among her influences animals and natural phenomena, art history and visual culture around the world, and artists from the generation preceding her—such as Eva Hesse, Nancy Spero, and Jasper Johns. Certainly, she shares with Johns a passion for the infinite possibilities of printmaking. Another influence has been her Catholic upbringing, which she has mined for female role models, and her work addresses the collective themes of death and mortality, birth and regeneration. The dozen works in this exhibition, on loan from a private collector, range from a print Smith began in 1985 to those dating from the last several years. The remarkable range of her inventiveness in various forms of printmaking is also well represented: linoleum cuts, etching, aquatint, lithograph, and photogravure.

Image: Kiki Smith, "My Blue Lake", 1995, lithograph in 3 colors with photogravure on hand-torn En-Tout-Cas paper, 43 1/2 x 54 3/4 in., co-copyright Kiki Smith and Universal Limited Art Editions, 1995, ed. 41