Smith’s large scale wooden sculptures are a means to question her place within the world. Her practice began by walking through forest and natural spaces, moving slowly to notice small details, to exist in an ecosystem that feels bigger than herself. Inspired by these journeys, her recent sculptural thesis involves carving large felled trees, exploring themes of interdependency and trust, considering the material as a body of its own. Manipulating wood in large raw forms into positions and bends that defy expectations, she plays with physical and metaphorical extremes, such as tension, compression, and the persistence of gravity. Through these relatively simple subtractive acts upon the material, it transforms into something evoking empathy and drawing out deeper emotional connections. Smith takes time with each piece, allowing the wood to carry a story of its own in conversation with her own narrative. Many of her forms take on gestural shapes, lending the wood a distinctly human, bodily feel and drawing in the viewer to experience their own form and gesture alongside the wood itself.
These wooden sculptures, mostly made with large tree trunks, vary in levels of bark and polish. Some soft wood pieces still hold their bark. Others have the bark mostly removed and are sanded to complete smoothness. This level of finish reveals the contours and depth created in the act of carving. Smith does not use stains or varnishes, instead permitting the natural grain and color of the wood to show. The lack of traditional wood finish elements emphasizes the overall shape and details of the pieces, letting them become figurative and gestural in their own skin. The pieces have multiple dimensions, angles, and details, requiring the viewer to move their body in various ways to catch the full extent of the sculpture, sometimes even requiring gestures mirroring those displayed in the wooden form.
Smith’s practice encourages intuitive play with wood as a material, while also inviting in other natural and found materials. Recently her authorship has shifted, allowing her sculptural decisions and movements to be informed by the history of the material, such as the natural rot forming in a tree trunk, or grain patterns in green wood. For Smith, these naturally produced forms partially resemble the body, and partially resemble nothing — a form that slips in and out of identification. Smith finds such studies fascinating, and continues to explore these in her practice. Her work continues to tell stories and raise emotional responses, drawing out the often unspoken truths of existing in a body.