Bio
Growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Smith made crafts with her mom and twin sister and dreamed of being a writer and a fashion designer. Smith’s adult life has been a multi-state journey of working various jobs while slowly furthering her education from community college to graduate level. Her work as an end-of-life caregiver, barista, and ceramics technician has taught her much about interpersonal relationships, self-growth, and the complexity of people’s lives and histories. Smith is grateful to have landed in Lawrence, KS, to funnel all of these experiences into her artistic practice using ceramics, painting, and textiles while at University of Kansas.
Some details:
AA- College of the Redwoods, 2013
BA- Humboldt State University, 2016
Extended Ed- Humboldt State University, 2017
AIR- Belger Art Center, 2022-‘23
MFA candidate- University of Kansas, 2023-26
Artist Statement
The heart of my work is people and what it means to be human. I want to convey everything we experience in our bodies: feelings of being ugly, beautiful, insecure, confident, anxious, meaningless, unique, and alive. By drawing and forming the human body, I can articulate how a feeling long held in your heart can suddenly show up in the curling of your toes. How restless hands always find something to do. How the negative space between two grown siblings yearns for closure. Like people, my work has many layers. Stitched lines, warm tones, figurative sketches, poetry, and gold lines are often woven onto one another to reflect the complexity of our identities. By exploring the disarming power of going further into our tender layers, I struggle with what it is to be a human and arrive at something that illustrates the profound capacity of the human form.