“Shift”

Shannon Smith

Photoshop graphic print

ARTIST STATEMENT

My personal college career ended with COVID-19 when I was sent home from campus to finish my courses, including Honors in Studio Art. I felt a deep sense of grief in how quickly I was displaced from my chosen academic environment and the family I created there, and I folded into myself to cope. I focus on the female form as the primary basis of my artwork because I use myself as a model. Each piece begins as a self-portrait but later develops into a fluid entity, embodying a relationship between space and form. Creating this art is a way to reflect how I am connecting with my body physically in quarantine, using touch as an act of comfort, but it also acts to personify my emotional and mental state.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Shannon Smith is a recent college graduate whose work is based in printmaking and sculpture. In her art, she strives to play with abstraction and intertwine those themes with a representational form like the human body.

To see more of Shannon’s work, take a look at her Instagram (@shannon.in.the.studio).