About ME
Rosalie Smith (b. 1993, Blacksburg, VA) is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily with found materials. She has a BA in From Smith College and an MFA in Sculpture from Hunter College. Her work has been shown internationally, notably including venues such as NADA Curated, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), Universität der Künste, Berlin, Southeastern Louisiana University, and the Carroll Gallery of Tulane University. Her work has been written about in The New York Times, Art in America, Burnaway, Hyperallergic, and WhiteHot, among other publications. She has exhibited her work recently at MAMA projects, VSOProjects, Upstate Art Weekend, All Street Gallery, Pulse Projects, The Garner Arts Center and Spring Break, among others. She has forthcoming exhibitions at the Torrance Art Museum, Frisson Gallery, and Spielzeug.
About MY Work
I am an interdisciplinary artist working primarily with found materials. I use science fiction narratives of my own invention as part of the architecture that guides the forms I build. My sculptures imagine a post-human world in which the 99% of us have devolved into growths upon piles of often tech related trash, after the 1% have jetted to Mars. I seek to depict an unsexy singularity between humans and technology; i.e. microplastics magnified to macroplastics, like an old phone receiver grafted into flesh. Each sculpture reflects the present and future pervasiveness of waste collected within, and representational of, our landscape. With a whimsical, absurdist tilt, my sculptures are inspired by the notion of navigating ecological crises with assemblage gadgets and vehicles.
My collection process is passive, in that I rarely go out of my way to collect materials. Rather, I find them as I make my daily commutes, while walking my dog, or traveling outside the city. Sometimes, the objects are things I own but no longer have use for. While perhaps symptomatic of my own lethargy, I believe this mode of acquisition lends itself conceptually to the work. The objects I collect document my movements through a primarily urban landscape, acting as a diaristic form of temporal and geographical research. I find this practice reflected in an avian companion.
As a gesture of interspecies goodwill, crows will bring humans who feed or protect them trinkets, bits of trash, and shiny things that they perceive to be of value. Different collections express a personal taste, some crows preferring buttons, bits of glass, acorns, etc.For example, green BuzzBallz are a recurring motif, almost all of which I have collected at intervals from the intersection of Church and Canal St. in Tribeca. From which, I deduce, that there is someone regularly hanging out on that corner that is particularly fond of green BuzzBalls, above all other flavors. And I, like a crow and a particularly appealing button, am drawn repeatedly to their ornament-like form and color. I develop symbiosis with this unknown person as I harvest the radioactive waste-tinted shells of their happy hour. They hadn’t left any for a few weeks in the spring, and I am wondering if they gave up drinking for lent.