Erin Koch Smith (BFA’05) exists in the “in-between” while she searches for mediums that make her excited.
“The dangerous part that I worry about it is that there is that part of you where it feels good when people like your work,” Smith said. “To make work so that people like it, feels really tempting. I try to push against that a lot.”
Across mediums, Smith’s work contains the element of existing in what she calls “in-between spaces.”
“There are times when the things seem fairly recognizable to me but not to other people and there are times when it’s the opposite,” Smith said. “I like that sort of ‘in the middle’ place of this (that) is sort of caught in the act of transforming into something else that is really interesting to me. This is a thing that can be recognizable and nameable, but also not.”
In Smith’s work there’s “a questioning of the veracity of things and also of being okay with poking holes in that,” she said.
Smith cites her own resistance to making distinct conclusions about what is true and what is fictional as another driving force behind her practice.
“My inability to connect those dots, that uncertainty, seems to be where I go to when I’m making my work,” Smith said. “It’s what keeps me interested.”
Read the full interview in The Daily Campus.
Image via erinkochsmith.com.
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