In the Studio: Barb Smith — Contemporary Sculpture, Memory, and the Trace of Everyday Objects

In this Barb Smith artist interview, Suzanne Seesman visits Smith's studio to discuss one of the central ideas running through her work: the trace.

Smith's sculptures and videos often begin with ordinary materials and objects that have already been used, handled, worn, or emotionally charged. Keys, washcloths, baby shoes, flowers, balloons and other seemingly insignificant things become ways of thinking about memory, absence, the body and the passage of time.

Rather than treating these objects as precious relics, Smith is interested in what they can reveal about human experience.

A washcloth, for example, can carry evidence of thousands of interactions between a person's hand, body and material. An old collection of keys can suggest entire family histories without revealing exactly who owned them. A childhood shoe can simultaneously evoke nostalgia, intimacy, sexuality and the passage from childhood to adulthood.

This tension between personal memory and impersonal material is one of the most compelling aspects of Smith's artistic practice.

The Trace of a Person in an Object

In this Barb Smith studio interview, Suzanne Seesman visits Smith's studio to discuss one of the central ideas running through her work: the trace.

Smith explains that the idea of the trace originally entered her work through an almost forensic investigation of absence.

Her early work examined an absent body and the places and objects through which evidence of that person might remain. The question eventually became more personal:

Where do I exist?

That question continues to inform her practice, but the meaning of the trace has evolved.

Instead of simply searching for evidence of a missing person, Smith increasingly considers how objects themselves can function as recording devices.

An everyday object can accumulate evidence without deliberately recording anything. Repeated use changes its surface. Friction creates marks. Handling produces wear. Time alters its appearance.

The result is a kind of material memory.

This is what makes Smith's approach to contemporary sculpture and memory particularly interesting. The memory does not necessarily exist as an image or written story. It exists physically, embedded in the material.

A worn object can therefore become a record of something that happened without telling us exactly what happened.

When Ordinary Objects Become Records

One of the most revealing examples discussed in the interview is a washcloth that came from Smith's parents' house.

The object was probably older than Smith herself and had been used repeatedly over many years. The friction between hand, body and fabric eventually produced a visible circular mark.

The washcloth had effectively recorded its own history.

This is an important idea for understanding Smith's work: objects as recording devices in art do not have to contain explicit information. Their surfaces can preserve traces of repeated human interaction.

The same principle appears in many forms of contemporary art that work with found or everyday materials. Rather than transforming an object into something completely unfamiliar, the artist can allow its previous life to remain visible.

Smith's work asks what happens when we stop thinking of an object as merely an object and begin considering the relationships that produced its physical condition.

The answer is not necessarily sentimental.

And that distinction matters.

Sentimentality Without Becoming Sentimental

A recurring concern throughout this Barb Smith studio interview is the difficult relationship between memory and sentimentality.

Smith is clearly interested in emotionally charged objects, but she is also suspicious of easy nostalgia.

She describes deliberately trying not to become sentimental even while moving directly toward subjects that naturally invite sentimentality.

Keys are a perfect example.

Smith purchased a collection of old keys on eBay. They arrived attached to their original key rings. As she examined them, she began noticing relationships between the keys.

Some seemed to belong to couples or families. House keys appeared alongside car keys. The arrangements suggested shared homes and shared lives.

Suddenly, what initially looked like a collection of anonymous pieces of metal became evidence of individual histories.

Smith found herself emotionally attached to the objects and struggled to cut them apart.

The problem was not simply that the keys were old.

It was that they represented relationships she could imagine but could never fully know.

She described the feeling as if she were rearranging a universe without having the authority to do so.

That moment demonstrates an important aspect of Smith's process. The meaning of an object is not fixed. It changes depending on how much history we project onto it.

Abstraction as a Way Out of Nostalgia

Smith eventually cut the keys apart and transformed them into a line.

The transformation allowed her to move the objects away from straightforward sentimentality and toward abstraction.

This is one of the central tensions in her work:

How can an artist preserve human connection without turning an artwork into nostalgia?

Smith does not solve the problem by eliminating emotion. Instead, she manipulates form.

The emotional history remains present, but the object becomes part of a larger visual and conceptual structure.

This creates a productive distance between the viewer and the original object.

The viewer can recognize the emotional potential of the material without being told exactly what to feel.

That tension between sentimentality and abstraction in art gives Smith's sculptures their unusual character.

The Catch-All Drawer

Smith describes her work as being more like a catch-all drawer than a precious display cabinet.

The distinction is revealing.

A cabinet turns objects into treasures. It isolates them, organizes them and announces their importance.

A catch-all drawer does the opposite.

It contains batteries, rubber bands, keys and other miscellaneous things that are simultaneously useful, unnecessary and difficult to throw away.

Smith connects this attitude to her family history.

Her grandparents lived on a small farm and experienced the Great Depression. Objects were saved because they might eventually become useful. Materials were repaired, repurposed and given another life.

Containers could become something else. Broken things could be fixed.

The value of an object therefore came not from its rarity but from its potential.

This history provides another way of understanding Smith's interest in found objects and contemporary sculpture.

The objects do not need to be culturally important.

They become interesting because they have been used.

The Human Residue of Material

The discussion between Smith and Seesman repeatedly returns to the idea of residue.

There is the physical residue left by friction, use and time.

But there is also a less tangible residue: the evidence of relationships.

A key carries the shape of a lock. A washcloth carries the marks of repeated contact. A childhood shoe carries traces of a body that once occupied it.

These objects are not simply representations of people.

They have actually been involved in human activity.

That distinction makes traces of human presence in art especially powerful.

The artwork does not necessarily need to depict a person. The person can be absent while their presence remains materially perceptible.

In this sense, Smith's work is interested in human traces in contemporary art without relying on conventional portraiture.

The body can disappear while leaving evidence behind.

Childhood, the Body and the Baby Shoe

Another object discussed in the interview is a pair of bronze baby shoes.

The shoes immediately attracted Smith because of their obvious sentimental associations: childhood, first steps and family memory.

But the object becomes more complicated when Smith considers its materiality.

The bronze forms a kind of metal skin over the original shoe, preserving its shape while simultaneously enclosing and hiding it.

Smith became interested in the relationship between the object and the body, as well as the cultural associations surrounding feet, childhood and sexuality.

This eventually led to a video work involving her own feet and the shoe.

The piece was deliberately unresolved.

Smith did not yet know exactly what the work meant or whether it was even finished.

That uncertainty is important.

Rather than treating the artist's studio as a place where finished ideas are simply executed, the conversation reveals artistic practice as an ongoing process of testing, questioning and revision.

Digging Into a New Direction

Smith also discusses Dig, a video work she made at Skowhegan.

At the time, she was frustrated with her existing practice and uncertain about how to respond to her surroundings.

She began digging.

The action became a way of investigating her own body and its movement. Smith noticed that her hands naturally moved almost as mirror images of one another—something she had always known physically but had never consciously considered.

From this experience, her attention shifted toward her feet and the body.

The work became part of a broader transition in her practice.

Rather than completely abandoning her earlier work, Smith began to understand the relationship between what she had previously made and what she was beginning to explore.

Artistic Practice as Augmentation

One of the most useful insights from this Barb Smith artistic process is her eventual rejection of the idea of starting over.

At one point, Smith wanted to eliminate everything she had previously made and begin again.

Instead, she realized that the solution was augmentation.

The new work did not need to erase the old work.

It could build upon it.

The keys, the digging video, the baby shoes, the floral cards, the inverted balloons and the washcloth could all become parts of a developing vocabulary.

The important question was not simply:

What should I make next?

It was:

How can the different stages of my practice speak to one another?

That is a particularly useful way of thinking about an artistic practice. Artists do not necessarily progress in a straight line. Earlier ideas can remain active beneath newer ones, resurfacing in unexpected forms.

Why Barb Smith's Work Matters

What makes Smith's work compelling is its ability to operate simultaneously on several levels.

At first, the viewer may simply encounter an unusual object.

Then its material history becomes visible.

Then a personal association emerges.

Finally, the viewer begins thinking about their own relationship with similar objects.

This movement—from object → trace → memory → personal experience—is central to Smith's approach.

Her work demonstrates how ordinary materials can become vehicles for thinking about time, identity, absence and the body.

It also challenges the assumption that contemporary sculpture needs monumental materials or spectacular forms.

A washcloth can be enough.

A collection of keys can be enough.

A baby shoe can be enough.

What matters is the network of relationships that the object allows us to perceive.

The viewer may not know whose keys they are looking at.

They may not know exactly who used the washcloth.

They may not know the child who wore the shoes.

But they recognize the basic human actions embedded within them.

That recognition is where Smith's work becomes universal.

Barb Smith and the Contemporary Art of Everyday Objects

Smith's practice can be situated within a broader interest in ordinary objects in contemporary art.

Artists have long used found materials to challenge distinctions between art and everyday life. But Smith's approach is particularly focused on what happens to an object through use.

She is less interested in an object simply because it is unusual than because it has accumulated a history.

This makes her work especially relevant to contemporary discussions about:

• material memory
• found-object sculpture
• personal history
• everyday materials
• nostalgia and abstraction
• the relationship between body and object
• traces of human presence
• artistic process
• memory in contemporary sculpture
• studio practice

The object becomes a meeting point between the individual and the collective.

We may not know whose keys we are looking at.

We may not know exactly who used the washcloth.

We may not know the child who wore the shoes.

But we recognize the basic human actions embedded within them.

That recognition is where Smith's work becomes universal.

About This Interview

In the Studio: Barb Smith is a studio conversation between artist Barb Smith and Suzanne Seesman. The interview explores Smith's evolving sculptural practice, her interest in trace and residue, the emotional complexity of everyday objects, and her efforts to balance sentimentality with abstraction.

The conversation also offers an intimate look at the uncertainty that accompanies an artist's transition between bodies of work—from the early investigation of absent bodies and material traces to later experiments with video, objects, the body and personal memory.

Originally presented by The St.Claire, the interview forms part of the publication's broader archive of independent contemporary art writing and artist conversations.

Key Themes

Barb Smith · contemporary sculpture · material memory · found objects · sentimental objects · trace and residue · everyday objects · artistic process · memory and contemporary art · Skowhegan · studio practice