Statement | Mysite

Since 2023, I've used the name "Zelda" both in my collaborative work with Georgia b. and in my individual practice. Past work can be found under my birth name "Laura Zelda Smith."

I come from long sweeping stretches of rich black farmland and bare uncovered earth. A place tied to the notion of turnover and cycles of resilience stemming from and yielding back into the soil. Perhaps it is not entirely unexpected, then, that the earth has come to be one of the signature materials of my work.

In 2012, I graduated Magna Cum Laude from Alfred University with a BFA in ceramics and printmaking, as well as a minor in English literature and Dance. My interest in ceramics and dance helped to orient me towards temporality as a significant element of sculptural experience. It was this that led me to Cal-Earth Institute of Art and Architecture, a vocational school specializing in sustainable housing and earth architecture. After being accepted as an apprentice, I lived and worked at Cal-Earth for three years, learning low-tech building methods such as super adobe, cob, and rammed earth. After graduating, I was commissioned by Cal-Earh (in 2015), and then Quail Springs, a sister organization (in 2019) to create interactive site-specific play spaces/landworks on their respective campuses.

Working with soil liberated my sculptural practice from prestigious materials and their attendant emphasis on durability and permanence. I turned toward a vocabulary of dirt, raw clay, and ephemerality. At the same time, I started to consider the over-saturation of the art world and the commercial trajectory of artworks both during and after an artist’s lifespan. I wondered if I could create sculptures that have the generosity to relinquish the space they take up, to create space for newness. This led to a focus on ice and fiber sculptures during my studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where I received my MFA in 2018. There, I became preoccupied with the open-ended possibilities and exciting uncertainties of transmutation. The way ephemeral objects shift, melt, erode, and deform over time. I began to think of my materials as agents and to focus on uncovering the performative vitalities latent within inanimate matter; butter soaking into bread, shadows stretching across a field, and objects chaotically self-disassembling. My "sloppy objects" become actors in theatrical performances in which they share and sometimes dominate the stage alongside human actors. I think of these performances as transitional situations where objects and bodies condense and collapse through, over, and into each other.

Since then, I’ve been selected as a resident artist at Sculpture Space, Salem Art Works, Vermont Sculpture Center, Carrizozo AIR, and Gilbertsville Express Movement Sculpture Park. LHUCA in Lubbock Texas, the University at Brockport, Collected Detroit, the Ford Robotics Building at the University of Michigan, and Room57 Gallery in NYC are among some of the institutions that have exhibited my work.

Most recently, I’ve been a visiting artist at Hartwick and Lehigh Universities with my collaborator Georgia b. Smith. Together, 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 projects were shown at Collected Detroit, where we were awarded first place for our presentation at the Artificial Horizons Conference and in Body Objects, a group show curated by Brecht Gander at Room57 Gallery in New York City. We are currently working toward an upcoming performance with Lehigh Engineering and Performance students that will be shown Spring Semester 2025.