Rhonda Smith

Rhonda Smith

Keedysville, MD 21756
P: 301-693-8094
Website: https://middlebridgestudio.com
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About the Work Travel and encounters with the art and culture of other peoples is a powerful motivator for printmaker Rhonda J. Smith. The themes of her intaglio prints and collages involve journey, excursions that occur both within the process of creating and in the physical encounters with places and cultures. Like the layers of journey that reveal themselves over time, Smith uses a matrix created on acrylic sheets printed in layers using non-toxic inks. Her printing plates are repurposed sheets of Plexiglas originally used to protect the table tops in her studio. After years of cutting and gluing on these transparent surfaces, she was preparing to toss them out but decided to try using them to make prints. By overprinting the various plates, and creating some with specific images, she found the surfaces produced a tangle of lines suggesting maps and coordinates. For Smith, the process of travel and printmaking are similar. Despite assumptions about where the journey may lead, she is always surprised by what she eventually discovers. Travels in West African led Smith to consider her work as a form of talisman or amulet, which are considered by the Taureg and Bamana peoples to contain the power of knowledge attainable only through personal commitment. Art is a similar investment that requires both the maker and the viewer to seek a greater understanding in order to fully appreciate the power within the object. Each print, each collage Smith creates is a talisman, a prayer and a wish to share with the viewer.