Blind Spot

the 2024-25 Alice C. Cole '42 Fellowship Exhibition

Kaitlyn Jo Smith

Jewett Art Gallery

Oct. 26 - Nov. 21, 2024

a person in long plaid coat standing in a gallery looking at a large white fabric box, the size of a truck trailer, with projection of Navajo truck rear panel on it; on the wall behind the person are white-on-green signs made to look like street signs; the uppermost reads 'BLIND SPOT, KAITLYN JO SMITH' and the lower has a lot of small text

Blind Spot is an exhibition of work by Arizona-based artist Kaitlyn Jo Smith, recipient of the 2023-24 Alice C. Cole '42 Fellowship from the Wellesley College Art Department.

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 serves 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.

people standing in a gallery near a truck trailer-sized inflatable white fabric sculpture with projected landscape

view from the rear corner of a gallery filled with a truck trailer-sized white fabric inflatable box with internal projection; a wood crate sits at its rear; people stand near the front of the gallery

Awarded to an outstanding early career painter or sculptor, the Alice C. Cole '42 Fellowship provides funds to support a year of time and space to experiment, develop a body of work, and focus on future artistic goals. The fellowship is made possible by the generous bequest of Wellesely alumna Alice C. Cole '42. Aware of the burdens that face recent graduates of art school, Ms. Cole makes it possible for artists to have 'a limited time free of economic necessity' - an immensely valuable gift.

This exhibition is on view in the Jewett Art Gallery from October 26 - November 21, 2024.

This exhibition involves both projection and a mechanical 'breathing' component. The projection is best viewed later in the day or on cloudy days, when there is less sunlight entering the gallery. While the piece's projection and recorded audio elements are live whenever the gallery is open, the mechanical breathing component is not active at all times. If you wish to make certain you visit the piece while it is breathing, please contact the Gallery Director (Samara Pearlstein, spearls2@wellesley.edu or 781-283-2043) for scheduled artwork activation.

close up on the top of a crate with oriented strand board wood top and spray painted black words 'BLIND SPOT', along with red and white Fragile shipping sticker

large white fabric inflatable rectangular form in a gallery with projection of yellow Schneider truck rear doors on one face

large white fabric inflatable rectangular form in a gallery with projection of orange-ish Schneider truck rear doors and white light or disintegration marks on one face, other warped projection images on the side

large inflatable fabric rectangle in the center of a gallery with projection of rear doors of a green truck; there are ghosted long exposure images of people looking at and moving around the truck sculpture

An essay about this exhibition, by Beatrice Geissinger Cutchins '27, is available here.

Kaitlyn Jo Smith

Originally from Ohio, Kaitlyn Jo Smith is currently based in Arizona. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally. She was longlisted form 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 (Barcelona). 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).

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