Lynne Smith

Lynne Smith is a post-disciplinary artist, designer, and educator. Through material poetics and sustained attention to landscape, she explores complex ecologies of place and “sites-within-sites.” Narratives unfold — and are retold — as weavings, archives, sculptures, multi-sensory installations, and public gardens.

Research and relational activity are central to Smith’s practices, in which materials serve as conduits for embodiment, connection, and knowledge. Smith teaches in the Sam Fox School, facilitates workshops for the Kemper Art Museum, and develops independent educational curriculum and programming for community-based non-profits.

Smith holds an MFA in Visual Art from WashU, a BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Kansas, and is an alumna of Yale Brissago. She is a named inventor for user-interface development on a patented medical device and received numerous awards for branding. Recent work has received grants from the IMSE Lab at WashU, the Luminary Futures Fund, a regranting initiative of the Andy Warhol Foundation, and the Regional Arts Council. Smith’s research at the National Building Arts Center (Sauget, Ill.) explores the relationship between two constructed infrastructures tethered by a stormwater system. She is one of 47 artists selected for Counterpublic’s 2026 triennial exhibition, “Coyote Time,” and will be exhibiting her adaptive reuse project that transforms NBAC’s loading dock into a wetland oasis featuring the American lotus.