Bio and Statement

My current body of work, Between Fires, explores my changing relationship to landscape during the Covid-19 pandemic. Over the past three years, my attention has shifted to small moments in my immediate environment that have taken on poetic, portentous, or mythical qualities under our current circumstances. This series explores catastrophe and routine, particularly response to when catastrophe seems to become routine. In the past 3 years I’ve spent significant time in my backyard and have come to appreciate how my activities in the yard have become a significant way I mark time in an era of pandemic, climate disaster, and political upheaval. I’m thinking through cycles of the moon, pin oaks, and an overgrown mock orange bush. The routine backyard campfires my loved ones and I sit at have become a way to mark life happening “between fires” of an endless series of dire current events.

Amanda Smith earned an MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a BA from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. She has exhibited and lectured nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in NY, the Rochester Art Center in MN, the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City, Box 13 Art Space in Houston, the International Quilt Museum, Sumaruyashiki in Miyagi, Japan, and Biblioteca Viva Egaña in Santiago, Chile. Smith was selected as a finalist by Barry Schwabsky for the Young Painter’s Competition hosted by Miami University and has been a visiting artist at many universities including Temple University, Rome, Italy, the University of Kansas, and the University of South Carolina. She has been an artist-in-residence at Fljótstunga in Iceland, Est-Nord-Est in Quebec, Canada, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Arrowmont Pentaculum, Art 342 in Fort Collins, and Monson Arts in Maine. Smith is an Assistant Professor of Drawing and Painting at Missouri State University.

https://amandasmithart.com/