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Home › News & Events › News › Kaitlyn Jo Smith earns top honor at CAA

Kaitlyn Jo Smith earns top honor at CAA

February 12, 2021

Congratulations to Alumna Kaitlyn Jo Smith (MFA, Photography, Video and Imaging, ’20) for winning the 2021 College Arts Association Services to Artists Committee Award in Graduate Film/Video, Animations, & New Genres! The showcase was juried, including guest juror Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi (Steven and Lisa Tananbaum Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art).

Smith’s winning video, “Lights Out,” was part of the 16 graduate videos included in the national juried showcase. She was not the only School of Art artist chosen for this showcase. Her Photography, Video and Imaging peers Anna Brody and Bella Maria Varela are also a part of the showcase for their videos “Never Let Me Down” and “Triathlon,” respectively.


Kaitlyn Jo Smith
Lights Out

In Lights Out, I utilize machine learning to render visible the intangible state of America’s labor force. The term lights out manufacturing refers to a fully automated factory that requires no human presence on-site, operating without heating, air conditioning, lunch breaks or unions. Similarly, the portraits in Lights Out are not real people, rather, they are deep fakes created by artificial intelligence utilizing a neural network. This neural network was trained using a dataset of 50,000 pictures of factory workers that I sourced through Facebook. I empower the machine to visualize those it has replaced by employing these found identities to teach the algorithm to see, interpret and render out its own assembly of laborers. As the neural network is fed more portraits to analyze, its deep fakes become more believable, resulting in a new labor force of 60,000 – one worker for each factory shuttered since 2000. The AI-generated faces have been meticulously organized into columns that slowly shift along the gallery wall. The monotonous, machine-like rhythm created by this horizontal assembly line mimics that of a conveyor belt, symbolically placing the portraits in dialog with capitalist commodities.

Anna Brody
Never Let Me Down

Never Let Me Down is one of a suite of videos (titled This Is The Only Thing We’ve Got) that address love relationships and the internalized values that mediate them. As a suite, these videos use time and performative actions to question the commitment, endurance, risk, and trust layered between the familial, platonic, and romantic loves that fill our lives. As an individual piece, Never Let Me Down is an embodied exploration of dependency, sacrifice, vulnerability, and platonic intimacy. It deals explicitly with the labor involved in communicating through mutual cooperation and negotiating compromise, and engages repetition in its capacity to create both comfort and tedium. I think of the actions in this and all my videos as muscle memory exercises that help me, as well as a viewer, to stay flexible and ready to learn what we haven’t yet grasped (or weren’t ever taught), and unlearn what we haven’t been able–or haven’t even tried–to let go of.

Bella Maria Varela
Triathlon

Inspired by my family’s competitive sporting spirit, Triathlon tracks the rhythms and terrains of American immigration and confronts the absurd constructs of US patriotism and exceptionalism. Triathlon is also a personal response to contemporary anti-immigrant sentiments; it is made in honor of child immigrants, resilient dreamers, and the ones getting swept away, around, and through the mess.

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University of Arizona School of Art
2 days ago
University of Arizona School of Art

Great oil painting by Galadriel Gross who is currently studying studio art and is working on her portfolio for an illustration emphasis!
•
"Self Portrait After Rain"
This was my first self portrait, and it was a real joy to paint. Knowing there is a version of myself in this painting that is always at rest, always breathing fresh air after a rain, and always in close proximity to the mud is self-affirming and grants strength to my active, living self. While I really love visual drama and tension, these quieter and calmer pieces always resonate with me for a long time.
... See MoreSee Less

Great oil painting by Galadriel Gross who is currently studying studio art and is working on her portfolio for an illustration emphasis! 
•
Self Portrait After Rain
This was my first self portrait, and it was a real joy to paint.  Knowing there is a version of myself in this painting that is always at rest, always breathing fresh air after a rain, and always in close proximity to the mud is self-affirming and grants strength to my active, living self.  While I really love visual drama and tension, these quieter and calmer pieces always resonate with me for a long time.
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University of Arizona School of Art
5 days ago
University of Arizona School of Art

Currently on display in the Lionel Rombach Gallery is After America Day by Day: A Counter-cartography by Mariel Miranda. Mariel is co-founder and director of the International Festival of Photography Tijuana (FiFT) a self-organized and feminist platform created for the undisciplined reflection on the image and its current modes of production. This great exhibition is compiled of evidence of Mariel’s counter-cartographic response to the 1947 road trip that Simone De Beauvoir took through the American Southwest. Link in bio!! ... See MoreSee Less

Currently on display in the Lionel Rombach Gallery is After America Day by Day: A Counter-cartography by Mariel Miranda. Mariel is co-founder and director of the International Festival of Photography Tijuana (FiFT) a self-organized and feminist platform created for the undisciplined reflection on the image and its current modes of production. This great exhibition is compiled of evidence of Mariel’s counter-cartographic response to the 1947 road trip that Simone De Beauvoir took through the American Southwest. Link in bio!!Image attachmentImage attachment+5Image attachment
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University of Arizona School of Art
6 days ago
University of Arizona School of Art

Here are more of our amazing student artists currently featured in the Lionel Rombach Gallery. Link in bio!!
•
The School of Art and Art Advisory Board are celebrating the works of our accomplished scholars at the 2020-2021 School of Art Scholarship Exhibition in the Lionel Rombach Gallery. Congratulations to our scholarship recipients and thank you for representing the breadth of visual art making, teaching, and scholarship here at the School of Art.
•
Artists featured are Alice Qinghui Chen with American Gothic, Perla Segovia with Transcendent Hope, and Danielle Jones with Rising Systems.
... See MoreSee Less

Here are more of our amazing student artists currently featured in the Lionel Rombach Gallery. Link in bio!!
•
The School of Art and Art Advisory Board are celebrating the works of our accomplished scholars at the 2020-2021 School of Art Scholarship Exhibition in the Lionel Rombach Gallery. Congratulations to our scholarship recipients and thank you for representing the breadth of visual art making, teaching, and scholarship here at the School of Art.
•
Artists featured are Alice Qinghui Chen with American Gothic, Perla Segovia with Transcendent Hope, and Danielle Jones with Rising Systems.Image attachmentImage attachment+2Image attachment
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University of Arizona School of Art
1 week ago
University of Arizona School of Art

Mark your calendars, the UArizona Art History Graduate Student Association is hosting their 31st Annual Symposium! Tune into this free Zoom event on March 5, 2021 from 9am-5pm to listen to an amazing group of student speakers as well as our keynote speaker, Dr. Nicole Fleetwood discuss art in the era of mass incarceration. ... See MoreSee Less

Mark your calendars, the UArizona Art History Graduate Student Association is hosting their 31st Annual Symposium! Tune into this free Zoom event on March 5, 2021 from 9am-5pm to listen to an amazing group of student speakers as well as our keynote speaker, Dr. Nicole Fleetwood discuss art in the era of mass incarceration.Image attachment
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University of Arizona School of Art
2 weeks ago
University of Arizona School of Art

This amazing sculpture is titled “Temporary Structures” by Marisa Lewon and is currently in the Alumni Exhibition in the Joseph Gross Gallery— link in bio!!
•
Temporary structures is an amalgamation of sand, skin, self-understanding and time. I use personal history to understand how the experience of where and how we are raised can alter reactions and perceptions of new landscapes as adults. In this work, my perception of, and aversion to, ideas of home are echoed through exploration of personal memory.
... See MoreSee Less

This amazing sculpture is titled “Temporary Structures” by Marisa Lewon and is currently in the Alumni Exhibition in the Joseph Gross Gallery— link in bio!! 
•
Temporary structures is an amalgamation of sand, skin, self-understanding and time. I use personal history to understand how the experience of where and how we are raised can alter reactions and perceptions of new landscapes as adults. In this work, my perception of, and aversion to, ideas of home are echoed through exploration of personal memory.Image attachmentImage attachment+2Image attachment
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University of Arizona School of Art
2 weeks ago
University of Arizona School of Art

The School of Art and Art Advisory Board are celebrating the works of our accomplished scholars at the 2020-2021 School of Art Scholarship Exhibition in the Lionel Rombach Gallery. Congratulations to our scholarship recipients and thank you for representing the breadth of visual art making, teaching, and scholarship here at the School of Art.
.
Artists featured are Tehan Ketema with Netsela, Dan Newman with iusedtothinkthatway, and Ada Smith with Twelve Breakfasts.
.
Link in bio!!
... See MoreSee Less

The School of Art and Art Advisory Board are celebrating the works of our accomplished scholars at the 2020-2021 School of Art Scholarship Exhibition in the Lionel Rombach Gallery. Congratulations to our scholarship recipients and thank you for representing the breadth of visual art making, teaching, and scholarship here at the School of Art.
.
Artists featured are Tehan Ketema with Netsela, Dan Newman with iusedtothinkthatway, and Ada Smith with Twelve Breakfasts. 
.
Link in bio!!Image attachmentImage attachment+3Image attachment
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