Sanctuary For Peace, 2004 Mixed Media Painting by Stacy Stewart Smith
Sanctuary For Peace, 2004 Mixed Media Painting by Stacy Stewart Smith
Description
Sanctuary for Peace is a work that changes as you move around it — and asks you to change as well.
At 48" × 60" × 4", this is not simply a painting but an environment. A graphite and gesso drawing on canvas depicts the interior of an empty New York City MTA subway car — that most democratic of spaces, where strangers from every nation sit inches apart, briefly sharing the same air, the same destination, the same silence. In Smith’s Abstractrealist vision, the emptiness is not absence. It is invitation.
Mounted over the canvas, a Plexiglas case carries its own language. Scratchitti — the etched marks of the street — cast shifting shadows across the surface as light moves through the work, revealing calls for world peace inscribed in known and unknown tongues. The phrase world peace is etched directly into the Plexiglas, present always, but visible only when the light is right. At the top of the work, a passage from Acts 2:4 is etched into the case — the Pentecost, the moment when all people suddenly understood one another across the barrier of language.
We all speak in different tongues, Smith suggests, but desire the same thing.
The Sanctuary series, of which this is among the largest works, operates in graphite and gesso — a primarily colorless palette in which light itself becomes the medium of transcendence. Works from the series were exhibited at Smith’s Brooklyn gallery in 2005 and collected by Gallery Guichard in Chicago. Sanctuary for Peace is a rare remaining original.
Acquisition
- Medium: Graphite and Gesso on Canvas beneath Scratchitti on Plexiglas
- Dimensions: 48” × 60” x 4"
- Year: 2004
- Exhibited November 10 - December 8, 2012 — Fantastic, Museum at FIT, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY
- Condition: Excellent
- Provenance: Artist's collection, New York City
- Ships from New York City; white-glove shipping available upon request
One-of-a-kind original. Shipping insurance is strongly recommended; please add it to your purchase.
Care
Stacy Stewart Smith offers made-to-order garments, fine art, and digital publications — each requiring different care. Please refer to the product description for care and handling instructions specific to your purchase. For garments: dry clean or spot clean unless otherwise noted; do not machine wash. For fine art: keep away from direct sunlight and humidity; handle with clean, dry hands or cotton gloves. For digital products and publications: no physical care required; download and archive your files upon receipt.
Design
Every Stacy Stewart Smith piece begins as a drawing and ends as a decision — a deliberate choice of textile, construction method, and proportion made by a single designer with five decades of practice. The same eye that composes a painting composes a coat: line, weight, negative space, and the relationship between form and the body that inhabits it. Garments are produced in New York City, one at a time, to the measurements and preferences of the individual client. No two pieces are identical. No production run exists. This is not manufacturing — it is making.
The atelier sources textiles for their hand, weight, and longevity. Sustainability here is not a campaign. It is the natural consequence of making only what is wanted, from materials chosen to last, by a craftsman who will not put his name on anything less.