Denise M Smith is a printmaker, photographer, and multi-media artist.
She studied art at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she received a BA in Fine Art with an emphasis on Printmaking and Photography.
Denise grew up in Palo Alto, California. Her father was an Architect who encouraged creative expression and introduced her to other artists in the Bay Area which led to a deep appreciation of the arts at an early age.
Her woodblock prints are known for their distinctive incorporation of heavy wood grain as an integral component of the imagery. The process begins with the careful selection of wood that has unique grain characteristics which align with the content of each piece. She works with both reduction and multi-block methods.
Denise’s photography focuses on naturalistic raw images where she is primarily interested in portraiture and architectural images. Black and white medium format film has been her preferred platform, although in recent years she has shifted towards digital photographs which are recontextualized in her abstract screen prints.
Screenprinting is Denise’s primary medium, which she explores in two different paths, figurative and abstract. “Telling Yarns” is an ongoing figurative series based on women’s stories and expressed in the format of “telling or spinning yarns” which were augmented tales that sailors told to entertain. These prints employ fantastical imagery, and often humor, to express life’s stages and challenges with an eye toward women.
During the pandemic Denise began printing multi-media screen print based abstracts due to the loss of studio access to create new screens. Her layered abstracts are underpainted and then layered with multiple screen prints and finished with chine colie woodblock print. They use color, texture, and pattern to evoke a visceral experience.
Denise is a member of the California Society of Printmakers, and has been featured in The California Printmaker Magazine, The Santa Cruz Sentinel, and the KQED Quest Blog. Her photographs are in The National Women’s History Museum archives for “30 Days Covid”.