Letter to Grandma
I go by "Zelda" in my collaborative work with Georgia b. and by my birth name, "Laura Zelda Smith" in my individual practice.
My individual practice revolves around ephemeral sculptures that shift, melt, erode, and deform over time. It engages the transformative and performative vitalities within inanimate matter; butter soaking into bread, moving shadows, objects disassembling themselves, ice melting. My "sloppy objects" are woven into theatrical performances in which they share and sometimes dominate the stage alongside human actors. Together or apart, my performers enter transitional situations where objects and bodies are condensing and collapsing through, over, and into each other. Cal-Earth Institute, the College at Brockport, Quail Springs, Sculpture Space, and LHUCA are among the institutions where my work has been exhibited.
In 2023, I started collaborating with my twin sister, Georgia b. We co-taught and developed a soft robotics course (Introduction to Wearable Soft Robotics) at Lehigh University and share a joint interest in affective design and “transitioning materiality.” Our most recent collaborative series was shown at Collected Detroit, where we were awarded first place for our presentation at the Horizons* Conference. Our work is currently being shown in Body Objects, an exhibition curated by Brecht Gander at Room57 Gallery, NYC, until April 21.
I graduated from Alfred University in 2012, after which I spent three years apprenticing at Cal-Earth Institue of Art and Architecture. In 2018, I received my MFA from the University of Colorado Boulder. Since then, I’ve lived between Northern France and New York.