I create work to better understand the past and its value to the world around me. Though I will utilize any necessary medium, I primarily create sculptural works that employ performance or multimedia accompaniment. My family’s traditional outlook and creative endeavors are the largest inspiration to my practice, as was a childhood spent around carpenters, gardeners, pastors, filmmakers, and musicians. While I began my academic practice exploring the border between the digital and tangible, recent projects have involved opportunities to investigate distraction through bodily manipulation, memory distortion through repetitive collage, and family history through ecological restoration. Though I generally investigate my own perspective, I invite people to recognize the changing realities of our contemporary culture through the lens of the past, and to dramatize the dynamics individuals face in our ever more stimulating society.
Gideon Smiley
