There's something about the moon. It holds an important place in nearly all cultures and evokes emotional responses from all of us at one point or another. Christina Collins-Smith calls it "one of God's most elegant and powerful creations...whose mystery, power, passion and light shine for all."

   Collins-Smith's new exhibit at Carroll Community College in Westminster honors the "universal nature" of the moon and the way it reflects a part of each of us. She calls it "Namaste: The Moon." Namaste is a Sanskrit expression that means essentially, "I bow to the sacred in you. " And so this exhibit does. To the sacred in us and in the moon.

   The entry piece is subtle and mysterious. "Moon Tangled" is multi-layered, grapevine over moonscape, digitally collaged, the process adding depth and shades of color. A spray of vine climbing the wall above the work adds grounding to the ethereal nature of the piece.

   Another layered piece with much different effect, "Moving Moons Through Open Windows," is crystalline, prismlike window frames breaking light into colors as a while moon trails itself across the sky.

   Movement has so abstracted "Blue Moon (Gabriel's Moon) that it could be a slice of blue agate, a geode cut across, its fractile image still changing, contrasting colors expanding outward - or perhaps the other way around.

   The movement in "Leigh's Moon" pulses with the energy of a city at night, jagged lines of light scurrying with their sources, a slower moving moon keeping watch, warm tones conveying comfort.

   Collins-Smith's mixed-media work "Promise Moon (Faith's Moon)" breaks the pattern a bit. Devoid of photographs, its many pieces come together, silvery crescent framing one of the artist's poems about such a moon, contempletive and quiet. Again, a warm palate belies our usual ideas of the moon in a night sky: blackly blue and cold.

   "Phantom Moon," scanned, collaged, and digitally painted on canvas, is personal, a small self-portrait emerging from behind a swirling moon, a Siamese-phantom cat serenely basking.

   Playing with layered colors, Collins-Smith has created a series of twelve versions of the same image, each named "Peace," each in the language of 13 different cultures, different hues changing the image, expressing this hope in ways unique and universal.

   Collins-Smith set out to create a show honoring the universality of the moon. She did that and much more. She created a show that is intensely beautiful and universally personal.

   The moon will never look the same again.

 

In addition to her journalistic contributions, Pamela Zappardino teaches psychology and art apprciation, is director of Plan Works Consulting, and co-director of the Ira and Mary Zepp Center for Peace and Nonviolence Education.