Kiki Smith was born in Nuremburg, Germanny, in 1954, and grew up in New Jersey. She lives and works in New York. Inspired by early studies in film and glass, and by work as a puppeteer, an industrial baker and an emergency medical technician, Smith began showing her art with the influential artist’s collective, “Collaborative Projects” in the early 1980s.

First recognized for her innovative work concerning the human body, Smith is a prolific printmaker, and has experienced working at several different print shops throughout her career. She began work with Harlan & Weaver in 1997 with the five-plate, twenty-foot “Destruction of Birds”, published by Thirteen Moons. Since then, Smith has worked on several more projects with Harlan & Weaver, including the first of a group of animal prints, “Immortal”, 1998, and the fifteen-print set of “Blue Plates”, 1999.

Smith has embraced the delicacy and sensitivity achieved with a finely etched line, and has produced prints that are simultaneously fragile and self-assured. Prints published by Harlan & Weaver share a common thread: most are representations of hair, in either animal or human form. Layering line upon line with short etches, and employing sandpaper as a way to add to and remove aquatint tone, Smith works and reworks the etched plate, adding depth and realism to the final image. In the etchings of animals, as in “Fawn”, 2001, or “Ginzer”, 1999, the texture of the hair is rendered with careful observation. “Falcon”, 2001, shows similar study of the graceful overlapping of a bird’s feathers. In etchings like “Two”, 2002, and “The Remains”, 2003, the individual lines of the face and beard are personal descriptions of her subject.

Smith has shown extensively in the United States and abroad. She has been in several important solo and group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial in 1991 and 1993.