By JAMIE KELLY of the Missoulian | Posted: Wednesday, June 2, 2010 10:30 pm

"Isn't she adorable?"

Natalie Smith winced a bit at the comment from one of her teachers, who poked her head into a counselor's office at Hellgate High School.

Perched on a leather chair in a yellow-and-white sundress, Natalie rolled her dark eyes, then got back to discussing her love/hate relationship with garbage.

"I love Dumpsters," said the 18-year-old. "Dumpsters are awesome. I won't even try to hide it."

She doesn't. Because every now and then, spelunking the malodorous innards of the big, blue garbage bins, or sifting through a heap of garbage in an alley, Natalie will find amid the filth a hunk of metal or an old radiator or a wooden frame or a kitchen appliance, discarded products of American consumerism that will find a new home in one of her postmodern sculptures.

"I have a big problem with modern-day consumerism and marketing," said Natalie, who graduates Saturday in Hellgate's Class of 2010. "In the end, it's all trash."

A gifted artist from a young age, Natalie's paintings and sculptures often speak to her beliefs.

Last February, her work was the subject of a monthlong exhibit at Butterfly Herbs. It included the painting "Venus Fly Trap," showing the Greek goddess Aphrodite being bombarded with urban trash, as well as "Modern Man's Mask," a metal sculpture of a face surrounded by a halo of knives with a plaster hand holding a plastic gun poking out his mouth.

Isn't that adorable?

***

We throw out a lot in the land of plenty.

John Smith and Nancy McMurray raised Natalie and her older sister Mariah in a small cabin in Potomac for 10 years before moving to Missoula.

There, they instilled in their daughters the value of living simply.

"I think we both tried to instill environmental awareness in them," said Smith, who met McMurray when both were fighting fires with the U.S. Forest Service.

As she came of age in Missoula, Natalie realized that America tosses aside not just things, but people - even entire families.

So last summer, the Harvard-bound senior whose passion for agitprop art is equal to her passion for human rights work, volunteered to go work in the blistering southern Arizona desert for the advocacy group No More Deaths. Started six years ago by a Catholic priest and a Presbyterian minister, the group provides food, water and medical aid to illegal immigrants hungry, hurting and dying of thirst in their treacherous trek across the desert.

They are suffering, said Natalie, because of America's "death-based deterrent policy."

"I just felt like I couldn't live here comfortably with the things they produce while we treat them as subhumans," she said.

No More Deaths doesn't help the immigrants find a home or aid them in their journey, but neither does it report them to the Border Patrol or other agencies. It merely tries to ease their misery.

***

That her daughter became interested and involved in such demanding work didn't really surprise McMurray.

"She has always been interested in marginalized people in our society," she said. "And this was her chance to do something."

Natalie delivered water to drop spots on known migrant routes, and helped map migrant trails to more efficiently deliver food and other supplies.

And that summer, she made a commitment to return the next year, saying the experience "changed my life."

That was before Natalie, who has a 3.82 grade point average and has taken the full load of advanced courses at Hellgate, applied to Harvard University.

She was accepted. But Natalie had made a commitment that conflicts with the start of classes this fall at the Ivy League school.

So with $28,000 in scholarship money and a world-class education at stake, Natalie informed Harvard that she would keep her commitment to No More Deaths. Would it be possible to get a yearlong deferment?

Whatever Harvard's answer, Natalie had made an unbreakable appointment. So over the school year, she took an EMT course to be able to work in Mariposa, Mexico, at a medical clinic giving aid to repatriated immigrants.

"I would have given up the chance to go because I made this commitment," she said.

Harvard gave her the deferment, and a spot in the 2011 freshman class.

***

Natalie plans to major in pre-med at Harvard, with a minor in art.

With plans to become a doctor, she said her goal is to help people either in a medical practice or education.

"I want to do something that affects people personally and immediately," she said.

McMurray has no doubt her daughter will do exactly what she sets her mind to. She's been watching her do so for 18 years.

"Everything is on Natalie's terms," she said. "She lives her life. When she's determined, you can't dissuade her or persuade her."

After her work in Mexico this summer, Natalie will go back to her job as a "courtesy clerk" at the Good Food Store, where she has been employed for two years.

The break will give her a full year to prepare for Harvard, but also more time to work on her art.

So if you see a dark-haired young woman Dumpster-diving in an alley in the coming year, you can be relatively certain that it's Natalie Smith.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1339214&forum_id=1#15252137)

http://harvard.listserv.org/threads/view/554

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1339214&forum_id=1#15255232)