Laura Smith’s works on Dura-Lar are distinguished by their reflective and dense qualities. In them she translates negative space into black, graphite drawings. Smith begins by temporarily collaging material from past sculptural works, creating new shapes from their outer edges and negative spaces. An outline is drawn around the perimeter of the collage and guides the process thereafter. Following the outline, she carefully applies graphite inwards until the shape is complete with heavily layered material. 

Intuition and methodicalness find a happy marriage in Smith’s practice. Much of her studio activity happens in between works that are paradoxically complete and perpetually in-progress. Versions are iterated on and recycled. The visual translation that Smith navigates through her works in Illumined results in a series of drawings that are hypnotizing, holographic, and puzzling.   

Laura Smith (b.1956, Manhattan, KS) lives and works in Tucson AZ, and Brooklyn, NY. Smith has been included in numerous group exhibitions and benefits at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Fashion Moda, MAX FISH, Robert Miller Gallery, and Smack Melon all in NYC, and the Rijks Akademie/Fodor Museum, Amsterdam. Most recently she was a part of the two person exhibition Magnetic alongside Victor Liu at PS122 in NYC. Smith graduated from the New School for Social Research, New York, NY with a BA at Eugene Lang in Liberal Studies, with Honors, and at Parsons School of Design, with a BFA in Painting, with honors, and a Prix de Rome semi-finalist for the Netherlands.