The Smolinski family — Jessica and Joseph, and their children, Leo and Olive — were in the Mercy Gallery on Tuesday afternoon, just a few days before the April 16 opening of their exhibition. Yet, it’s as if so many other family members were there, too. 

Each of the four Smolinskis has art in the exhibition, along with artwork created by family members who came before them. 

“Joe and I both come from families where people have made art, and that has been an inspiration for us,” Jessica said. “It is important to continue our passions of making art and shows the kids the value of art, contributing to culture in an important way.” 

Leo will graduate from the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven, a magnet high school, this year. Olive will be a freshman in the fall.  

“I grew up with art all around me,” Olive said, “and I feel it is my life now.” 

“In our house,” Leo said, “the line between living space and studio space are one. Making art and learning about art and living with art has been so deeply ingrained in how we live as a family.” 

Beyond making art, Jessica also works as the documentation photographer at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, and Joseph is a professor of art at the University of New Haven. The opening reception for the exhibition is Thursday, April 16, 6–7 p.m. The Smolinskis will give a brief gallery talk at 6:15 p.m.

Mercy Gallery Director Melanie Carr said she was drawn to the exhibition’s focus on a family of artists, with artmaking and creative inquiry connecting generations across past and present. She noted that this lineage — where making art is a sustained, shared priority — offers a compelling parallel to the sense of community fostered within a boarding school environment. As a gallery director and curator, she also remarked that exhibitions centered on professional artists along with artist families are relatively uncommon, making this a distinctive and engaging presentation, given that many of Mercy Gallery shows focus on one artist at a time. 

On one wall of the gallery were paintings of birds. Near them, two mosaics.  

“My grandfather’s painting [of a bird] is next to my paintings [of birds], so it is nice to see the connection,” Joe said. “And Olive’s mosaic is next to my mosaic.” 

 

Joe was 2 years old at the time his grandfather painted that bird. “I grew up looking at it, and he actually taught me how to paint when I really young,” Joe said. Joe created his bird paintings in the exhibit during COVID, when the country was shut down but the mind of an artist was not. “There were masks and gloves everywhere,” Joe said, and those markers of the time period are reflected in the paintings. 

“When we were thinking about this exhibition, I had my mom send me [my grandfather’s piece] because I realized it was similar to the bird studies I was doing, so I made this frame for it,” Joe said. “My grandfather was a naturalist. I grew up in Minnesota, and he built this amazing cabin in northern Minnesota, and we used to bird watch and see all the creatures and critters. I think the idea of not just appreciating an animal, but taking the time to do a painting sunk in.”  

He paused and let out a laugh. “During COVID I guess I was jealous of the birds,” he said. “There was a sense of freedom they had. I felt it was important to document that. All these birds [are painted] from photos taken in our backyard, and I took photos of masks and gloves on walks. So it is a bit of a time piece.” 

Quilts made by Jessica’s grandmother hang on another wall of the gallery. “That was one of her many, many talents,” Jessica said. “I don’t know if she would have called herself an artist — but she definitely was.” 

So, too, was Jessica’s great aunt, Edith. Two of Edith’s drawings are part of the exhibit. “She was born in 1922,” Jessica said. “In the 1950s she had returned from this incredible time in Europe but had missed the polio vaccination. She contracted polio and became quadriplegic for the rest of her life. … She had never painted before contracting polio but she did so using a brush in her mouth. She was incredible.”  

Jessica said that when she was younger, her aunt gave her a subscription to ARTnews magazine. “I felt like she opened up my world to the New York art world,” Jessica said. 

The Smolinski exhibition is called “If I Ever Was a Child,” taken from a song by Wilco, a band whose music is part of what the family listens to at home. “The phrase conveys a longing for childhood and points to the influences we carry into adulthood,” the family writes in a description of the show. “In our family, influence moves in overlapping concentric circles, reverberating forward and backward — from family history into the present texture of everyday life. The objects we make carry these traces, sometimes overtly, sometimes barely visible, but always with a connecting thread.” 

In conjunction with the Smolinski exhibition, the College-Level Art Capstone Exhibition will be on view, along with featured student work from all visual arts disciplines in the Barnes and Wilde galleries. All exhibitions will run through May 29.