Rosalie Smith

I am an artist and poet born in Blacksburg VA., 1993. I moved 11 times before turning 18, some of which was spent in Upstate New York, Miami, and New Orleans. I studied art and landscape studies at Smith College. I moved back to New Orleans after graduating and worked at the Contemporary Arts Center as a grant writer until my mother was diagnosed with cancer. I left my position to help care for her, and began committing time to my artistic practice again. I was included in the first significant shows of my career the same month she died, August 2018, one opening the night of her death.  During April of 2020, I took long walks in New Orleans. I saw rubber medical gloves accumulate in gutters, vacant lots, and the neutral ground. I collected them, recognizing them as a kindred material to my larger body of work--filthy, worn, a futile attempt at protection. I began using thin coats of resin to cast the gloves into organic forms, as featured in "Water Hyacinth." As an interdisciplinary artist, I collect non-art objects that speak to grief and attachment. In manipulating the detritus, I explore humanity's futile attempts to control our environment in the face of ephemeral truth. I am drawn to natural erosion of the built environment, the illusion of permanence, and the inevitability of loss. I work with concept driven media, including resin, found materials, and wood. In my work I replicate processes of documentation and preservation, exposing their fallibility. My practice has often resulted in personal monuments to human experiences, made accessible through formal abstraction. My Mother’s Last Garden is an installation made with flowers collected from bouquets sent to my mother when diagnosed with terminal cancer. In an effort towards preservation, I coated the flowers in resin and planted them in cement. In this installation I evoke the solitary yet universal nature of grief. The process reflects a struggle to preserve the already dead flowers. It was recently written about in Art In America, after being shown at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.
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