Lauren Dana Smith (b. 1979, Philadelphia) is an artist, writer and art psychotherapist living in Taos, New Mexico. Smith’s research-based, multidisciplinary practice utilizes sculptural, digital, video and sound compositions to process land and body politics through a feminist lens. Smith studied painting and received her B.A. from Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, New York. Smith is a faculty member at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where she received her M.P.S. in Creative Arts Therapy and Creativity Development.

Smith’s work has been exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally. Smith has also published and presented widely within the fields of psychotherapy, art therapy, traumatology, pediatrics and palliative medicine. Smith is a Co-Founder of the Taos Abstract Artist Collective.

Statement
Smith’s work analyzes and deconstructs consciousness, collective experience and existential presence using an arts-based research practice that centers video and sound composition, large-scale sculpture and alt-narrative development.

With a practice rooted in psychodynamic theory, critical pedagogy, relational neuroscience, Jungian symbology, sociocultural critique, social-action and arts-based community organizing and intergenerational trauma repair, Smith’s work tests the boundaries we choose and those we don't. 

Smith’s current research project, V.I.S.T.A.: Transmutationist Field Journal references themes of natural selection, naturalism, evolution, colonialism, Darwinism and altered human consciousness through the socially-activated collective; a creative, anti-racist and non-binary approach to the Origin of Species narrative. 

The project asks, What if the Origin of Species narrative occurred outside of the bounds of the social constructs of the Western, patriarchal, European and Victorian/colonialist framework available in 1831? What if Darwin’s primordial soup was a primordial ether, and consciousness was a self-generative digital apparition, defying binary classification? What if evolution is a mode of consciousness and Darwin’s early contributions existed concurrently with parallel, multitudinous inquiries into terrestrial experience across another expression of reality? 

Smith is currently developing a catalog of video + sound “travel logs” that deconstruct damaging sociocultural frames and instead grapple with diverse definitions of consciousness through encounters with biomorphism and emotional entrainment. Interested in honoring the depth and narrative of the American Southwest and its parallels to personal and ancestral memory through a feminist lens, Smith’s multidisciplinary approach represents a departure from the familiar iconography of traditional Southwestern art.