Kate Smith


Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Fiber and Material Studies

Kate Smith is an emerging artist based in Chicago, Illinois who earned her MFA in the Fiber and Material Studies department. This current body of work is a visual representation of stories that have been silenced. These stories are specifically revolving around the silencing of past traumas and how forcing silence upon a person often leads to habitual self-induced silencing and censorship. Even when a story is silenced it still lives on in the memories of the body and under the surfaces that are presented to the world.

In this work, what appears to be sheets of notebook paper is actually cotton muslin fabric that are hand painted to look like notebook paper. This action, to recreate a banal object in a time consuming and meticulous manner, is a process that utilizes trompe l’oeil as a way to deceive the eye and hide in plain sight.