Liz Rundorff Smith (Travelers Rest, SC) received a BA in Studio Art with a concentration in sculpture from the College of Wooster in Wooster, OH in 2000 and an MFA in Painting from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2005. Rundorff Smith studied abroad at The Marchutz School of Painting in Aix en Provence, France and the British Institute of Florence in Florence, Italy and was awarded a fellowship and residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her work can be found in private and corporate collections including the Marilyn Monroe Bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and Sun City Showa Kien Koen, Tachikawa, Japan. Rundorff Smith is a member of the Painting Center Art File in New York. Her work has been featured in Southern Living, TOWN magazine, Talk magazine, and Create Magazine Issue 20. Recent exhibitions include the two-person show But We've Come So Far at Susan Eley Fine Art New York, NY, The Shape of Things at 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, SC, Coined in the South: 2022 at the Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC and The Architecture of Everything at James May Gallery, Milwaukee, WI. Artist Statement:My work elevates the mundane, mimicking the way we bring significance to loss with keepsakes and memorials. I want to create work that evokes a sense of nostalgia and exposes the sentimentality in memory. Color choice is tied to the decor and design trends of decades past that have become kitschy artifacts. Patterns reference fragments of domestic spaces and utilitarian objects while shifting to suggest the passage of time and the loss of stability that accompanies remembrance. Shapes intimate objects that are no longer identifiable but retain familiarity and reference urns, shrines, and places of veneration. Embellishments like fringe and shiny gold finishes play into the chintzy aesthetic of souvenirs, recalling party decorations, parade floats and prize ribbons and elevating the ordinary to something to be celebrated.