About

Begin the Begin Again brings together two artists; Jill Saxton Smith and Ike Bushman who have expressed reactions to seismic shifts in both of their lives as they navigate similar experiences of betrayal, divorce, and a new life of single parenting. These shifts precipitated a transformation not just in material, but in the conceptual approach to their practices.

Beneath physical form and structure, Bushman and Saxton Smith work with found domestic objects to imbue them with an inner life of emotion. Their processes of art-making that are both rooted in material investigation provide them space not only for processing their past experiences but also gives them a space for healing and to explore and redefine the meaning of love.

Jill Saxton Smith is a Utah-based artist who has lived and worked as an artist internationally for over 15 years. She has earned an MFA from Emily Carr University of Arts and Design in Vancouver, Canada. Her experience gained while living in the U.S., Egypt, Zimbabwe, and Guatemala have given her unique opportunities and insights that have greatly impacted and enriched her artwork and career as a studio artist. 

Saxton Smith’s interdisciplinary work calls attention to the felt experiences, both physiological and psychological, that comprise and shape our being-in-the-world. Her work focuses on material explorations, pushing found objects to their limits. She combines these found objects with raw construction materials—concrete, chicken wire, nails—and lets physical experimentation lead to a process-based practice. Saxton Smith follows the trajectories of chemical reactions, stains, and physical force on her materials in the studio. Through this, she infuses mundane everyday objects with life, energy, and emotion. She explores themes such as comfort, dislocation, motherhood, detachment, and the sense of home. Her investigation concerns whether these emotions and inner experiences can be transferred and embodied in the intuitive processes and simple materials she draws on to create her work.

Saxton Smith exhibits her work internationally on three continents, including at The National Gallery of Zimbabwe. She has given lectures, taught workshops, and demonstrated her art as a visiting artist to a variety of schools and organizations with a special interest in underprivileged and disabled artists.

Ike Bushman holds an MFA in printmaking from the University of Alberta and has been making art (printmaking, sculpture, and painting) with a variety of media for many years. 

His art practice has been described as a sad song in beautiful colors. He takes a meaningful phrase, often misheard or misinterpreted, and paints it over and over again until it loses meaning then takes on a new one. He paints these phrases, in bright colors, on discarded and worn blankets, quilts, shirts, and even discarded shutters for supports on which to paint his text-based paintings. He believes that these items carry a history and an energy that helps dictate the final image.