She sells seashells Rockland woman takes her artistic inspiration from the shore

If you love all things bright and colorful, if you have a taste for quirky creativity, and above all, if you can’t resist seashells, you’ll want to meet Kitty Smith.

Her life story led her in 2001 to establish a gallery she calls Kitty Smith Designs at 22 Lindsey St. in Rockland. The brightly painted building that houses her residence and gallery is easy to find, thanks to a large mermaid and other lively decorations on the outside walls.

When you enter, the display is even more attention-getting. The place is an emporium of seashell-covered items that range from the merely decorative to the utilitarian.

It also holds boatloads of other items, including everything from a wall covered with fish-shaped boards painted in vibrant colors to handmade jewelry to seashell-filled lamps to paintings of saints.

Anyone who knows something about crafts will know the work packed in Kitty Smith’s shop represents not only countless hours of work, but also a passion for seashells and other decorative arts.

One shell-encrusted clock, for instance, required the careful placement of hundreds of seashells. Production of a bust in the corner – ornamented with everything from huge abalone shells to exotic trochus shells – took not only time and considerable experience with manipulating the materials, but also a flair for design.

Sitting before her easel recently – in a room lined with shelves bearing jars filled with all sorts of seashells – Smith said her passion for seashells began during her girlhood in coastal Mattapoisett, Mass.

“I was ill as a child, and the other children brought me seashells,” she said. She remembers sitting on her bed beside a window, where she delighted in arranging the shells into designs.

“Ever since then, I’ve collected and arranged seashells,” she said. After she recovered from her illness, her seashell collection grew exponentially. She has filled as many as 16 trash bags in a single “shelling” outing.

In Massachusetts and then Maine, Smith aspired to make a living as a painter, but the income was disappointing. “I had all these shells,” Smith recalled, “and I said to myself, ‘Why don’t you do something with them?’ So I made a shell wreath and decorated some mirror frames and saw that people wanted to buy them.”

She scours yard sales to find tables, chairs, boxes and old hand mirrors to cover with shells. Of course, she also needs to maintain a considerable supply of shells, some of which she purchases but many of which she collects herself.

She uses a jigsaw to cut wooden boards into the shapes of fish, starfish, sea horses and mermaids, which she encrusts with shells and other ornamental items. She also paints some of the fish-shaped boards using acrylics to make whimsical wall hangings.

Perhaps the pieces that are closest to her heart are her paintings of saints. She first learned about icons from a world-traveling uncle who had seen them in Russia.

In keeping with the depictions of icons elsewhere in the world, there’s a simplicity and hauntingly spiritual quality to Smith’s unpretentious depictions of her favorite biblical figures: the Virgin Mary, St. Brigid, St. Francis, St. Christopher and Mary Magdalene. In some cases, she embellishes the paintings with pearls, semiprecious stones and seashells.

Such are the treasures that Smith fashions.