Tomorrow 2021: Siena Smith

Working with weaving, drawing, collage, and lithography, I try to work out the complexities of my emotions and Black identity. Drawing and weaving give me the opportunity to create a foundation of imagery that I can build on. Layering with different mediums allows me to reflect upon and confront certain feelings... expectations, memories of feeling inadequate, angry, sad, joyous, proud, resilient. 

Artists such as Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden and Kathe Kollwitz, illustrated the beauty and strength of the human condition as well as the suffering during wars, depressions and migrations. Because my family has lived through past pain, trauma and labor, I feel lucky that my work is a labor that I have the choice and freedom to do. Doing the work sets aside time to notice repetitive feelings and respond with new modes of making. Marks, threads, multiple materials assembled together create a representation of how I feel after a stressful conversation, after a racist comment, after watching my friends walk in a Black Lives Matter demonstration, after hearing my grandmother’s voice on the phone.