Retired UWindsor visual arts professor Susan Gold Smith will open a solo exhibition of new works, entitled “Interior Decoration,” Saturday, January 18, at SB Contemporary Art.

Small woodland animals, birds from foreign lands, polar bears from the icy Norwegian north peer out from the canvas, intertwined and folded into the décor that surrounds them. Botanical wallpapers line the walls, holding place and standing in for habitat environments. 

In this new body of work by Gold Smith, says curator Sarah Beveridge, there is a juxtaposition at play between notions of private space, a domestic space and human’s unanswered obsession to capture, contain, and preserve the natural environment.

“In Gold’s work there is intrigue, and mystery to her ideas that focus on relationship between the house as museum and museum as house,” she says. “There is a gentle critique represented of our own cultural values projected onto our living spaces.”

A free public reception will celebrate the show’s opening, from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday. The exhibition runs until March 1; the gallery is located at 1017 Church Street.