soft grids

Solo Exhibition by Leah Smith

 July 29 - August 2, 2025

Reception: Friday, August 1st | 6-8P

Artist Talk: August 1st | 5:30p

Artist Roundtable: Saturday, Aug 2nd | 3-4p

More About soft grids

The works in soft grids are meditations on the way everything holds together loosely. Every new creation is an experiment, everything is provisional, even when it is modeled from a seemingly long-established pattern. Everything is temporary, shimmering in the forever-now. The only lasting resilience arises from imperfect iteration over time. Our world is an untold number of individual creations, each meeting their now just well enough to hold in place for a moment.

More About Leah 

Leah Smith explores the edges between human creativity and the natural world through an artistic practice encompassing drawing, sculpture, and fiber arts. After growing up in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains near Denver, Colorado, she fell in love with exploring the green, worn-down hills of Appalachia during her college years, and now lives and works in the small town of Canton, North Carolina. She earned her BA in Studio Art from Davidson College in 2013, where she was the recipient of the McAllen Scholarship for Studio Art. Her work has been exhibited nationally, and she has held residencies at the Hambidge Center (GA) and I-Park (CT).

To learn more visit leahsmith.studio or follow Leah on Instagram/Bluesky @eahsmith.studio 

More About The Artist Roundtable  

Leah Smith’s and Sterling Bowen’s practices engage with the geometric. They both also center connections as a strategy for making and a conceptual source. This roundtable will explore both the common territory they explore, and where their practices may take similar directions for differing reasons. Joined by Chris Thomas and Allison Tierney, the artists will engage with each other and the audience for an hour-long discussion of strategies for practicing in today’s world.

Sterling Bowen

Sterling is first and foremost an abstractionist. He is primarily interested in the value that contemplation has in our contemporary society. The body of work he developed for And…and...and was the first he created in over a decade. Based in Raleigh, NC, his practice includes painting, installation work, writing, and curating. He also enjoys teaching and is a member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid. 

Leah Smith

Leah Smith explores the edges between human creativity and the natural world through an artistic practice encompassing drawing, sculpture, and fiber arts. After growing up in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains near Denver, Colorado, she fell in love with exploring the green, worn-down hills of Appalachia during her college years, and now lives and works in the small town of Canton, North Carolina. She earned her BA in Studio Art from Davidson College in 2013, where she was the recipient of the McAllen Scholarship for Studio Art. Her work has been exhibited nationally, and she has held residencies at the Hambidge Center (GA) and I-Park (CT). 

Chris Thomas

Christopher Thomas is an artist who makes paintings, drawings and artist books. He teaches all levels of Printmaking at UNC Greensboro, and as Studio Foundations Coordinator works broadly to promote first-year art majors in their studio practice and portfolio development.  His work dwells on process-oriented image translations of digital imagery into handmade works on paper and has been exhibited nationally at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Les Yeux du Monde Gallery in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Baltimore Museum of Art, CAM Raleigh, and at Chicago’s A.R.C. Gallery. Thomas has also exhibited internationally at The Foundry, a gallery based in London, England, and as part of the artists’ collective The Printmakers Left at Graphica Creativa: The 12th International Print Triennial in Jyvaskyla, Finland.

Allison Tierney

Allison Tierney is a visual artist based in Pittsboro, NC. She received her BFA from Winthrop University and her MFA from UNC Chapel Hill, where she was awarded the Top Prize for Outstanding MFA Work. Her artistic practice relies heavily on painting and the language of abstraction to respond to found objects, while simultaneously employing various craft techniques to explore personal identity, comment on consumerism, and investigate the divide between craft and art.