On June 15, the smART Gallery will host an “Artist Talk” at 6 p.m. The featured artist is Alice Shapiro, who will discuss her digital art form and worldwide exhibitions. The smART Gallery is located at 210 N. Queen Street in Kinston.

Shapiro graduated from SUNY Farmingdale and studied Fine Studio Art at Hunter College with Robert Huot. While at Hunter, sculptor Donald Lipski chose Shapiro for a student show at the Hunter Galler. Shapiro received an Air France Art Award and was accepted into the smART Kinston art residency program 2022-23.

Shapiro began her art career as a portraitist in pastels, oils, and acrylics and found digital creation to be a life-changing creative direction in her art career. Shapiro’s influences are Bauhaus, Surrealism, the Collagists, Pop Art, and Installation.

As a digital collage artist and previously a Painter/Curator, Shapiro sees more technological inclusion evolving. Her art explores chaos/order, design/fine art, and complexity/simplicity. She seeks to solve the dichotomy of diversity versus exclusivity.

When creators pull from personal values, experiences, and visions that engender joy, she believes digital art can survive, thrive, and, more importantly, leave the world a better place. Spiritually and creatively, Shapiro sees herself as an interpreter-connector, with collage being the most powerful medium to express the relevance of her work.

“My first awareness of art as a child came from a magazine ad selling prints by Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso,” she said in a December 2022 interview in Al-Tiba9, a website devoted to contemporary art.

“I was shocked that reality could be depicted in a distorted way, shattering my comprehension of how the world appears to others. In a way, I was awakened to the ‘me’ as a unique objective consciousness.

“Collage is the closest medium I’ve found able to visually reproduce a storyline. Most of my work includes people as objects meant to explain a part of the story rather than to idealize an individual. I use people as I use other objects, like a tool to point to a theory or message. I’ve recently explored fashion, Asian culture, and scapes of local scenes.”

She finds that digital art provides the best medium for communicating her sense of reality.

“My art has to express the essence of the people, places, and things I choose to gather into a visual story,” she said during the Al-Tiba9 interview. “The story, however, doesn’t always have to be literal, linear, or make sense. Sometimes you simply get a glimpse of different inexplicable realities.

“For instance, while washing the breakfast dishes and thinking about tasks needing attention, my mind suddenly conjured up a dream I had several days prior. I instantly realized I was jumping dimensions of consciousness by reliving the dream as if I were still asleep and simultaneously being awake in my kitchen.

“Everything in our reality is the same thing and only appears individual or dual because they are on the same spectrum. Day and night may seem opposite, yet they are both the same thing at different phases.”

Anyone interested in previewing her work can find one of her collages hanging at The Laughing Owl and another featured at Middle Grounds Coffeehouse.

You can hear her ideas in person during the “Artist Talk” on June 15.

Mike Parker is a columnist for the Neuse News. You can reach him at mparker16@gmail.com.