About | danismithstudio

Dani Smith Studio is a Multi-disciplinary creative powerhouse that

Converges painted portraiture with Black feminist themes of survival, fugitivity, and becoming to explore the multi-dimensional effects of intersectional trauma on the mind, body, and spirit.
Writing that uses my personal and real-life experiences to power short stories, poetry, and essays that provide an intimate scope into the lived reality of the current moment.
Artistic research that combines sociological investigation with biological sciences, mathematics, physics, and chemistry as a method of art advocacy that translates the devastating and invisiblised effects of prejudiced ideology into tangible, visual, and approachable formats that promote deeper understanding and intimate connection.
Community facilitation that wields the power of artistic process of drawing, painting, and writing through creative workshops to rehabilitate intersecting forms of trauma as a method to reconnect with the self and external communities, lectures and artist talks that connect current issues to their historical contexts and provide insights on how those experiencing trauma or oppression have used art and creativity as methods of survival and self-healing,
Creative direction offering digital and print design for nonprofit organizations and brands that seek to leave a lasting social impact through bold graphics, quirky illustration, surprising layouts, and fresh color palettes,
Whimsical crafts that upcycle Amazon boxes and whisky bottles into enchanting furniture and fixtures.

Growing up in Monterey, California, I cannot recall a time when I was not knee deep in heavy creation. Duct tape, wire hangers, newspaper, ink pens, and markers were the daily tools of my trade as I walked up and down sunny cul-de-sacs selling watercolor paintings from baskets, wearing shoes and clothing of my own design.

Navigating undiagnosed neurodivergence, I infused the creative process into academia as a way to have a better grasp of the material, which created valuable skills in processing and communicating information around me into vivid visualisations.

I discovered painting at 5 and have never wavered in my dreams to become an artist. This led me to pursue a degree in painting at the California College of the Arts, travel to China and Australia, to pursue painting residencies, a master’s degree in Studio art at The George Washington University, and a doctorate in Art Research at Goldsmiths University in London, England.

Fine Art as Research

Fresh from completing a Phd at Goldsmith’s University of London, my research project, So the Cursed May Conjure – the Alchemy of Survival in an AntiBlack World, is an ongoing response to the mental health crisis effecting Black girls and women in western socio-political landscapes such as the US and UK as a material exploration that visiblises and transmutes the effects of intersectional trauma through rituals of praxis-based Black feminism and artistic practice.

This project interrogated the continual erasure of Black female bodies by locating normalized violence embedded within the tangled mesh of a colonial space-time continuum to address the invisiblised effects that both nullify and complexify intersectional lived experience. As a result, haunted hyper-dimensional ruptures permeate social systems, severing institutional, cultural, and personal resources and support while placing understandings of Black suffering outside normative registers, leading to substantial physical, psychological, and spiritual consequences. To striate the overlap of racial and sexual violence, I render these voids as metaphysical zones of nonplace to reveal how the bodies and trauma of Black women and girls disappear between binaries of race, gender, sex, class, (dis)ability, and citizenship through silencing and erasure.

Hijacking this ontological position as an artistic framework, I engage multidisciplinary techniques that transform conventions of portraiture into embodied translations of experience where the ghosts of colonialism and residual psycho-neurological effects of personal trauma transfigure into spiritual guides and survival scripts.

Paired with personal and borrowed accounts of intersectional violence faced by Black women, painting, drawing, and storytelling converge through process-based queries to uncover what data can be mined from ruptured epistemological locations of self.

As art matter mutates from oil paint on canvas towards the fluidity of watercolor, transparency of glass, and the formlessness of airbrush, figurative self-representations refract to articulate shifting phases of being indicative of processing overlapping and conflicting forms of trauma.

By recasting traumatic coordinates of nonplace into conjure sites where alchemical processes are catalyzed through creative catharsis, this approach engages activated art-making as cultural theorization, social justice, self-historization, and portaling technologies of selfhood to investigate how the charged energy of these locations of time and consciousness can be harnessed to discover profound self-serving alternative spaces and modes of being that re-assert humanity and promote healing.

Design Studio

I create work that inspires, advocates, educates, connects, heals, and offers small but necessary slivers of joy in such a world as this.

My practice moves fluidly between fine art, wearable design, and upcycled craft. Through limited reproductions of my original paintings, I extend the life of each piece beyond the canvas, allowing the work to travel, to live in homes, and to continue its conversation.

In my print designs and illustrated apparel, I center messages of affirmation, resilience, and pride. Words and imagery become quiet armor as reminders of strength, identity, and belonging.

On the fine art side, I hand-paint lush, expressive compositions onto wearable surfaces such as handbags, totes, shoes, and jackets, transforming everyday objects into unique works of art. Each piece carries the intimacy of the handmade and the boldness of visual storytelling.

In the crafting barn, discarded materials, boxes, bottles, fragments, and broken things are reimagined into sculptural centerpieces. Upcycling is both a creative challenge and an act of care: a way of honoring what has been overlooked and giving it new presence, new purpose, and new beauty.

Across every medium, my work is rooted in the transformation of materials, of surfaces, and of spirit.