Haw Contemporary is pleased to announce an upcoming solo exhibition by Debra Smith, Walking in Traffic, the artist’s fourth with the gallery. The exhibition will present new works through which the artist furthers her exploration of vivid compositions through the use of vintage textiles, creating works that display a controlled and exuberant chaos of pattern and design.

Please Join Us Friday May 30th, 2025 5 - 8pm for an Opening Reception with the artist.

Walking In Traffic is a meditation on movement – hesitation and trust, chaos and flow. Inspired by a moment in Cairo, where a young man I’d met the night before in the hotel restaurant reappeared just as my mother and I stood stranded before six relentless lanes of traffic. When I asked how to cross, he simply said with calm certainty, “You just have to go, They will stop for you.“  Then, with quiet confidence, he guided us forward, and what had seemed impossible, became fluid and instinctive.

That same trust – stepping into uncertainty with faith – is echoed in my artistic practice when I enter my studio. But in this relentless political climate, where chaos overwhelms and uncertainty stretches endlessly, creating feels like an act of defiance – both necessary, and impossibly difficult. Some days the weight of it all dulls instinct; other days the work itself becomes the only way forward. 

As a third-generation textile artist, my work is deeply inspired by the passions and explorations of my mother and grandmother, women who instilled in me a reference for fabric – its history, its makers, and the memories it holds. Working with vintage textiles, I honor the hands that wove them before me, preserving their essence, while transforming them into a contemporary narrative.

Through intuitive cutting, piecing, and layering, each work becomes more than material – it is a bridge between generations, a conversation across cultures, and a declaration that even in uncertainty, we continue forward, shaping what comes next.

Debra Smith (b. 1971, Kansas City, Missouri) is a contemporary textile artist known for her abstract fabric collages that blur the boundaries between fiber art, painting, and drawing. Raised in Hannibal, Missouri, she grew up in a creative household surrounded by textiles, an early influence that continues to shape her practice.

Smith studied at the Italian Academy of Fashion & Design and Lorenzo de Medici in Florence, Italy, before earning a BFA in Fiber from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1993. She later received an Associate Degree in Applied Science from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York in 2002.

While living in Brooklyn for over a decade, Smith continued sourcing vintage silks particularly deconstructed Japanese kimonos from Asiatica in Kansas City (a former employer), textiles found during International travel and exploring New York’s Garment District. These found materials became central to her process, offering embedded histories and emotional resonance that she recomposes through intuitive cutting, sewing, and layering.

In 2005, Smith returned to Kansas City, where she continues to live and work. Her compositions begin with a reverence for the textiles themselves; each fragment carries vision and labor of its original maker. By cutting, piecing, and layering these vintage materials, she pays homage to those hands, while extending their stories into a contemporary language of abstraction. Each work becomes both preservation and transformation: a dialogue across Time that acknowledges what came before while shaping what comes next.

Smith’s work challenges conventional ideas about textiles and “women’s work,” repositioning fiber as a medium of intellectual and emotional depth. Her collages have been widely exhibited in both national and international venues and are held in numerous public and private collections.

“I am not a poet or someone who draws,” she says. “But my use of vintage textiles brings a history, a weight, a poetry to the work before I even begin to cut, sew, and piece it back together.”

14 November 2024 - 11 January 2025

Nick Ryan Gallery presents Seeking Balance, a solo exhibition by Kansas City-based textile artist Debra Smith. This marks Smith's debut exhibition in Colorado, and we are thrilled to welcome her to the Nick Ryan Gallery artist roster.

Opening Reception: Thursday, November, 14, 2024 from 5 - 8 pm.

Artist Talk: Now at 3:30 pm on Saturday, November 16.

Seeking Balance

October 25th- November 26th

 OPENING RECEPTION
OCTOBER 25th 6-9 pm
816-715-4838

Hours at the crossroad location for this Fall are:Wednesday-Saturday 3-9 pm

Debra Smith’s new works contained in the exhibition Seeking Balance are the result of both an intuitive process, formed from years of working with historic textiles, and a mindful practice. Each work is an open expression, constructed in an extraordinary way - with hours of stitching, embedding layer upon layer of material. For Smith, her art is an articulation of her life. It is this dance to distract and effort to breathe where eventually everything connects and the destination is a place of beauty and clarification. 

If you would like a PDF catalog including images and information on available work emailed in advance, please contact:

emily@hawcontemporary.com

Memory Trace at Studios Inc.

Opening Reception Friday, November 10th from 6:00 - 9:00 PM.

Gallery Talk Saturday, November 11th from 12:00 - 1:00 PM

Gallery Hours

Tues - Friday 10:00 - 12:00 PM  & 1:00 - 4:00 PM

Saturday 12:00 - 4:00 PM

First Friday 5:00 - 9:00 PM

Memory Trace is an exhibition of pieced vintage textiles.

In an effort to expand community outreach, Debra Smith will be creating a temporary studio within the walls of the exhibition space. She invites the community to get a peek into the creative eye and the evolution of her pieced silk textiles. After a recent surgery, Smith felt her brain cells diminished, and she began to revisit the lost bits of pieced vintage silk that had been created over the last 20 years but had not yet made it into a finished work. During her recovery and in an effort to maintain a studio practice Smith created 100 7 x 7 inch pieces reflecting on these Memory Traces that have occurred over the years.

Along with the installation of these 100 works, Smith will also be creating a living wall of silk that will be sewn over the length of the show in a temporary studio set up within the exhibition space. Guests are invited to sit, chat, or bring a lunch while the artist sews. Several student visits, private lunches and pop-up events will be scheduled during the month. Please contact the artist to schedule a visit or follow along on social media for events.

The 2017 Exhibition Series has been made possible through the generous financial support of Jane Hunt Meade and Dr. Benjamin Meade.

Currently on view at THE DAUM Museum:

The Thread You Follow, an exhibition featuring artist Debra Smith and Donna Sharrett,

on view from October 1 to December 20

Debra M Smith and Donna Sharrett are fiber artists who employ an eclectic and intricately technical practice that bridges the conventional divide between crafts and fine art. Both artists repurpose found fabric in their compositions, which is painstakingly cut and stitched together to form compatible, yet distinct, bodies of work. Sharrett employs a sculptural approach to explore memory and symbolic ritual in her circular assemblages. Smith takes a more painterly interest in the arrangement of her fabric scraps, and concentrates on the formal language of shape, color, and texture in rectangular arrangements that yield a cubist-inspired graphics.

The exhibition seeks to spark an aesthetic dialogue between Sharrett’s and Smith’s oeuvres by installing them in a single, large gallery that affords each a discreet but common space. The work of both is clearly slow to make and there is obvious care, patience, and skill. This is an essential and shared characteristic; however, while they explore similar media and processes, they diverge in terms of intent and presentation.  Sharrett’s assemblages invite close scrutiny and play to archetypal understanding; Smith’s compositions are best contemplated as unified wholes and offer stimulus for the viewer’s imaginings.

SHIFTING TERRITORY

January 8th-February 7th

Opening Reception, Thursday, January 8th, 2015

Kathryn Markel Fine Art

529 West 20th, suite 6W

New York, NY 10011

212-366-5368