Her artistic roots run deep. Her mother was an artist who attended the first Andy Warhol Campbell's Soup Cans show at the Ferus Gallery in 1962 in Los Angeles. Smith also lived and worked in Germany for many years, attending art school in both Nurnberg and Berlin during a pivotal time in the late 1980s. Smith was present with fellow students to assist in the base layer prep and painting for Keith Haring's famous mural on the Berlin Wall in 1986, later celebrating with Haring and members of the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. These early experiences have been foundational influences of her reinterpretations of 20th Century pop art.
Smith currently explores imagery and objects with a focus on pop culture, celebrity, consumerism, nostalgia and art history. She reinterprets familiar pop art icons, speaking to the fleeting nature of technology, people and our natural resources. From the surface, the viewer sees beauty in Smith's work - bright colors, pastels, a vibrant candy-like aesthetic, but upon closer inspection, the viewer experiences layered and more meaningful themes. Using a wide variety of materials and mediums including discarded computer disk drives, commercial packaging and found scraps of street advertising, Smith blends the practice of screen printing, painting and collage.
