Barbara Lee Smith

Barbara Lee Smith is a mixed media artist, writer, educator, and curator. She creates large scale landscapes and abstract works using a three step process of painting, collage, and machine stitching.

Smith graduated from Douglass College in 1959 with a degree in home economics. While raising her children she taught herself machine embroidery and went on to become an instructor. In the late 1960s, she moved to Chicago where she taught contemporary embroidery and design. Smith returned to college in the late 1970s graduating with her MFA in mixed media from Northern Illinois University in 1978. She has worked as a studio artist since that time relocating to the Pacific Northwest in 2000 where she retained a studio on Raft Island until late last year.

Smith has exhibited her work in over 25 solo exhibitions in the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Japan and participated in multiple invitational group exhibitions. She also has held appointments as visiting professor in Japan, The Netherlands and England and curated a variety of textile exhibitions. She authored the book Celebrating the Stitch: Contemporary Embroidery of North America, published by Taunton Press in 1991.