Hawk + Hive
Mike Casey & Carrie Mae Smith: Offerings
July 4th - August 2nd, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 4, 2pm - 6pm
Hawk + Hive is pleased to present Offerings, an exhibition of paintings by Mike Casey & Carrie Mae
Smith.
Both artists work within the still life tradition, but what emerges is less about depiction than about
attention, how objects accumulate meaning through proximity, repetition, and care. There is something
quietly ceremonial in these paintings. Everyday items, food, fabric, vessels, and small arrangements, are
handled with a sensitivity that allows them to hover between the familiar and the symbolic.
Carrie Mae Smith currently lives and works in Gilbertsville, New York, where she serves on the faculty at
SUNY Oneonta. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Delaware (2013).
Smith approaches still life as a practice of attention rather than display. Her paintings gather modest
arrangements - cloth, fruit, vessels, and small domestic elements - and hold them in a quiet state of
suspension. These are not anonymous things, but items marked by use and proximity, carrying a sense
of care without slipping into nostalgia. Rooted in a longstanding engagement with cultivation and
making, her work moves at a slower tempo, suggesting that to look closely, to arrange, and to return
again is not passive, but a quietly insistent act.
Mike Casey lives and works in Bovina, NY. He earned his BFA at the Museum Art School Portland OR
(1973).
Casey’s paintings approach still life with a grounded, tactile intensity. His objects—cups, plates, food,
and vessels - are built through a slower, more deliberate accumulation of paint, giving them a weight that
feels both physical and psychological. Forms are simplified but never inert; they seem to hold a quiet
charge, as if shaped as much by memory as by observation. Color tends toward the muted and tonal,
with passages of density and abrasion that anchor the compositions. There is a sense of return in the
work, of revisiting the same motifs and allowing them to shift subtly over time. Rather than describing a
scene, Casey’s paintings register presence, asking us to sit with the object until it reveals something
beyond its surface.
For further Information please contact Jayne Parker:
jayne@hawkandhive.com (917) 544-9071 www.hawkandhive.com
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Hawk + Hive
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Mike Casey & Carrie Mae Smith: Offerings
July 4th - August 2nd, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 4, 2pm - 6pm
Hawk + Hive is pleased to present Offerings, an exhibition of paintings by Mike Casey & Carrie Mae
Smith.
Both artists work within the still life tradition, but what emerges is less about depiction than about
attention, how objects accumulate meaning through proximity, repetition, and care. There is something
quietly ceremonial in these paintings. Everyday items, food, fabric, vessels, and small arrangements, are
handled with a sensitivity that allows them to hover between the familiar and the symbolic.
Carrie Mae Smith currently lives and works in Gilbertsville, New York, where she serves on the faculty at
SUNY Oneonta. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Delaware (2013).
Smith approaches still life as a practice of attention rather than display. Her paintings gather modest
arrangements - cloth, fruit, vessels, and small domestic elements - and hold them in a quiet state of
suspension. These are not anonymous things, but items marked by use and proximity, carrying a sense
of care without slipping into nostalgia. Rooted in a longstanding engagement with cultivation and
making, her work moves at a slower tempo, suggesting that to look closely, to arrange, and to return
again is not passive, but a quietly insistent act.
Mike Casey lives and works in Bovina, NY. He earned his BFA at the Museum Art School Portland OR
(1973).
Casey’s paintings approach still life with a grounded, tactile intensity. His objects—cups, plates, food,
and vessels - are built through a slower, more deliberate accumulation of paint, giving them a weight that
feels both physical and psychological. Forms are simplified but never inert; they seem to hold a quiet
charge, as if shaped as much by memory as by observation. Color tends toward the muted and tonal,
with passages of density and abrasion that anchor the compositions. There is a sense of return in the
work, of revisiting the same motifs and allowing them to shift subtly over time. Rather than describing a
scene, Casey’s paintings register presence, asking us to sit with the object until it reveals something
beyond its surface.
For further Information please contact Jayne Parker:
jayne@hawkandhive.com (917) 544-9071 www.hawkandhive.com
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