Bio
SHANNON P. SMITH (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist making work spanning photography, woodworking and glasswork. Currently pursuing an MFA in Studio Art at the University of Arkansas, she considers the ephemeral nature of time while crafting narratives of introspection and nostalgia.
Smith has exhibited work throughout the US including Arkansas, Georgia, Los Angeles, Michigan, Nebraska and Texas and is a recipient of the Sturgis International Fellowship and an Artist 360 Grant. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Smith earned her BA in Television Production at Michigan State University and previously worked as a Script Supervisor in Los Angeles, California.
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Artist Statement
the noise of time…. is a meditation on home, memory, and the fluidity of time, told through sculpture and photography. Rooted in the complexity of Black identity and ignited by the passing of my father, this work began as a challenge: to create something interior and vulnerable, specific to my experience yet open enough for others to hold.
Influenced by The Poetics of Space, I consider the home not as a container for objects, but as a vessel for dreams, remembrance, and grief—a structure that holds what cannot be seen. If our homes hold more than our physical belongings, I ask: what do trees hold? What histories are embedded in their rings, knots, and scars?
In my practice, I gather discarded wood, cut it on the bandsaw, and reassemble the fragments intuitively, akin to improvising jazz music. Following the rhythm of the grain, I construct small vessels—imperfect, repaired. The splits are not flaws but evidence of endurance. Woodworking connects me to a lineage of hands preceding mine; though new to the craft, I feel a sense of ancestral recall–my hands guided by my grandfather, a carpenter. I sense him in the scent of fresh-cut sassafrass and the slow ritual of sanding. Woodworking provides a sense of freedom. In shaping the material, I am also shaped.
Within and alongside these sculptural forms, I embed photographic images drawn from my archive—a Polaroid emulsion lift engages with glass, photographs overlay wood's grain obscuring the rings of time. A photograph taken yesterday can feel decades old with time bending, folding, and overlapping. Through these gestures of layering and reimagining, I revisit moments with my father, tending to the residue of his absence. Art becomes a site of caretaking—a place for grief to rest, for anger to soften into gratitude.
Together, these works function as small archives. They honor inheritance while embracing imperfection, revealing how love can persist through material form. Amid loss, I search for beauty in the quiet, ephemeral textures of daily life—spaces where time hums softly, and healing happens.
“Grief is Love that has no place to go.” (Regina King)
For me... art has become that place.