JAN SMITH

Works on Paper, Print Making, Metalwork, Sculpture, Jewelry, Installation Art, Vitreous Enamel

City: Salt Spring Island, British Columbia

Website: https://jansmith.ca

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jansmithartist/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jansmithartist/

Artist Statement: In my artistic practice, I investigate concepts that evolve from an intimate connection to place and reflect a sense of identity and home. This inquiry informs my practice and deepens my investigation into the formal aspects of marks, their composition and placement.

My mark making is comprised of repetitive lines and dots pushed and scratched into a metal subsurface; the metal provides both a foundation for vitreous enamels and an aesthetic attribute. Employing enameling techniques that give a tactile delicacy I shift how the metal is perceived, suggesting surfaces and textures from the natural and domestic environment. I create a language or code that affords me a method of signaling or marking the body. Jewelry has a capability of identifying and marking a body and as a carrier of meanings. Jewelry is both intimate and public, and through it portability it is almost performative in nature. I aim to memorialize and commemorate the transient, unnoticed moments of our natural and domestic world. I am asking the wearer and viewers to reflect on what is fleeting, perhaps endangered, in these times.

Biography: Jan Smith is a Canadian contemporary artist focused on the use of vitreous enamel in combination with altered and textured metal. Smith is investigating the codes and patterns within our environment through a language of line and mark marking. Born in Vancouver, BC Smith received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, NS, specializing in ceramics and intaglio printmaking. Smith lives on Salt Spring Island and maintains an active studio practice.

Smith’s work has been exhibited in Canada, USA, Japan, Peru and Europe. Her work is to be found in private and public collections including the Canada Council Art Bank, The Burnaby Art Gallery, and Simon Fraser University. Smith Has been the recipient of four year grant from the Helen Pitt Fund for Fine Art/Vancouver Foundation and juror’s awards from the Northern CA Enamel Guild and Enamelist Society.

Jan was Artist in Residence in the Summer Visiting Artist Series 2016 at NSCAD University, Halifax, NS, The Smitten Forum, Mendocino Art Centre, Mendocino, CA and Pentaculum, Arrowmont Art Centre, Gatlinburg, TN. Publications featuring her work include New Brooches and New Earrings, Signs of Life-2006, and five of the Lark 500 series.