About

Stephanie Smith is an Atlanta-based artist, printmaker and educator creating expressive woodcuts and linocuts of narrative and symbolic images. She earned her B.F.A from the Atlanta College of Art and received a M.F.A. with Distinction from the University of Georgia.

Stephanie is a Senior Lecturer at the University of West Georgia where she has taught in the art program for 20 years. She is actively involved in education and has a range of teaching experience including community education at the Atlanta College of Art and Chastain Art Center. These experiences, the wonderful people she worked with, and a passion for the medium of printmaking inspired her to co-found the non-profit arts organization, the Atlanta Printmakers Studio in 2005. After serving for 5 years as President of the Board of Directors she continues to serve on the board and volunteers her time at the studio.

Stephanie has received numerous grants and awards, including multiple artist residencies at the Hambidge Center for Creative Studies, a KBFUS Cultural Exchange Grant, artist residency at the Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium, and a Decatur Seed Grant for her print-installation The Creative Act. Her work can be found in many public and private collections including MOCA GA, Royal Museum of Fine Art in Antwerp Belgium, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, and University of Denver Special Collections. In 2024 she received the Ebon Dooley/Jack Sinclair Visual Artist Award for arts leadership from the ArtsXchange in Atlanta.

Artist Statement
I am interested in making expressive hand-pulled prints and artist books to create narrative and symbolic images that represent a processing and reinterpreting of experiences and observations of both the natural and emotional world. Themes explored in the work include memory, loss, time, chance, and change. Visual storytellers Lynd Ward and Frans Masereel, as well as comix and graphic artists are an influence in much of my work. The visual iconography of medieval woodcuts and altarpieces serve as inspiration and a system of communication based on images and commonly understood symbols as opposed to reliance on the written word.