2024-25 Kaitlyn Jo Smith

Kaitlyn Jo Smith, the 2024-25 Alice C. Cole '42 Fellow, has an interdisciplinary studio practice that considers the implications of automation on labor and religion in relation to America's working class.

Originally from Ohio, at the time of this fellowship she was based in Arizona. Her work has been shown nationally an internationally. She was longlisted for the 2021 Lumen Prize in Art and Technology (London) and received the College Art Association's Services to Artists Committee Award for her video Lights Out. Smith has been featured in PDNedu, Art IDEAL, and Al-Tiba9 Magazine. She has presented her work at FEMeeting: Women in Art, Science & Technology (Évora), Technarte International Conference on Art and Technology (Barcelona, virtual), and Homecoming, Society for Photographic Education Annual National Conference (Denver).

Blind Spot

Jewett Art Gallery

Oct. 26 - Nov. 21, 2024

Over a year in the making, Blind Spot examines the tension between the rise of automated trucking technologies and the history, present, and potential futures of American truckers. This multimedia installation transformed the Jewett Art Gallery with a 1:1 scale inflatable sculpture of a big rig trailer. This sculpture served as a canvas for a projected digital fleet of trucks pulled from Google Street View images from all 50 states; Smith removed the trucks from the images, then used AI to fill in the blanks, creating an imperfect and uncanny machine-rendered void space where human-driven industry used to be.

Smith uses AI as a tool in the creation of her art as she questions AI's role in the future of American production and labor, effectively asking the machine to participate in dialogue around its own critique.

several blurry people standing in a gallery looking at a large inflatable rectangle lit from within by a projection of the back of a Navajo branded truck

large inflatable rectangle lit from within by projections of trucks; at left on the wall is exhibition signage made to look like green and white highway signs

large inflatable rectangular form lit from within by semi-abstract projection of what might be leafy landscape; at left is a small wooden crate with a short umbilical to the inflatable

large inflatable rectangular box form lit from within by projection of a slightly distorted street scene; at right is a small wooden crate

ghosted people moving through a gallery around a large inflatable rectangle lit from within by a projection of the back of a green truck

Kaitlyn Jo Smith artist website

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seal of the Alice C. Cole '42 awards - line drawing of a woman with chisel and paint brush, surrounded by circular borders and oak leaves

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