"I like to view and use common materials as gestures of our culture, artifacts that can tell us more about us by evoking personal responses," she adds. "I often use the human figure cutout of textured metal and suspended in mid-gesture to imply that an action is about to take place or has just taken place"

So it is with the tartly acerbic I'm OK, You're Not, a bit of transactional analysis satire, on dating in the 1990s and the impossibility of meeting men who do not bring along their own emotional baggage to relationships. A knife sticks into a box filled with fine silver wire-a symbol, Smith says, of confusion. On top the box a man stands on a rock, which she describes as looking more like a mushroom cloud ("It's a very volatile piece"), with a tulip behind him, a touching gesture of reaching out to another. But instead the lonely figure grasps his head in bewilderment or perhaps despair; it is too difficult to rise above personal habits and conditioned responses, and he seems about to go into full retreat Smith laughs, promoting the belief that it is really a simple matter of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, but also evidently a feat that many fear will undermine their own sense of selfhood.

In Enfranchisement, to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of women achieving the voting privilege, a male waves a bra before dropping it into a ballot box marked `X? Also signifying the degree to which people are denied their societal rights, the implication is that women, in much of the world, are still not treated much better due to male control and dominance. Now though, the male is being forced into keeping a much more watchful stance, as only one foot holds him to the box, and a pail perched on his head dangerously tips forward. A favorite motif for Smith, the bucket just might spill its contents; dearly it is an unstable and unpredictable component to be reckoned with.

Then there is the mixed exuberance portrayed in the brooch titled And Over Here, Aspidistra. Smith shows herself walking purposefully and swiftly through her garden on the way to the studio. While she wants to take the time to pick up the clippers and trim the plants, nourishing their growth, there is work inside to finish and an exhibition date looms. Smith recognizes the dualities and ironies present in her visual displays. Something can be very serious indeed, but showing that the usual way of dealing with it is "like putting out a fire with a barbeque lighter, which just makes it worse; but still you can find some humor in it. By approaching my artwork in that way, nothing seems quite so bad."

Smith's artwork has been recognized and supported by grants from the California State Arts Board; and the Western States Art Federation/National Endowment for the Arts. She has been published in the books One of A Kind: American Art Jewelry Today, Twentieth Century Jewelry, and Design Visions.  She has also received coverage in the magazines Metalsmith, American Craft and Architectural Digest. Her works have recently been included in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's exhibition Made in California, and the