About Britney Smith
Artist Bio
Britney Smith is a mother and artist, born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. Her studio practice is rooted in ceramics, utilizing pinch and coil building methods often finished with soda firing to create objects that explore themes of care and maternal practices. Through her work, she investigates legacy—questioning what is tended, remembered, and carried forward—while drawing inspiration from nature, growth, and Black foodways.
Smith currently serves as the Art and Design Program Director and Instructor of Art at Carlow University, where she teaches courses in ceramics and sculpture. She also works as a Teaching Artist at the Father Ryan Arts Center. She views her dual roles as artist and educator as essential to one another, grounding her work in the belief that creativity is a communal act.
Her work is represented by Charlie Cummings Gallery and has been exhibited nationally, including at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Concept Art Gallery, and the Carlow University Art Gallery. Smith is a recipient of the Emerging Artist Scholarship from the Three Rivers Arts Festival and the Emerging Artist Award from the Northern Indiana Clay Alliance. She maintains active membership in the region’s creative community with Sibyls Shrine, the Kaboo Clay Collective, and the Pittsburgh Society of Artists.
Artist Statement
My work traces the threads of lineage, care, and knowledge passed through generations of my family.Rooted in historical hand-building practices, I create ceramic vessels that speak to what is held, tended, and carried forward. Pinched and coiled forms, often soda-fired and marked by subtle textured surfaces, become spaces for exploring the quiet labor of inheritance—both material and spiritual.
Drawing on my cultural background and the legacies within my family, I look to everyday objects, domestic wares, and the symbolic language of Black foodways as sites of memory and meaning. My most recent work embodies these ideas through the small offerings they contain. These objects become metaphors for the things we plant in each other, the stories we protect, and the fragments of ourselves we leave behind.
The loss of family matriarchs has deepened my awareness of the fragility of these inheritances and the urgency of preserving them. As a mother, I consider not only what I have received, but also what I now carry—what I hope to pass on to my child, to my students, and to the communities I move within. My work emerges from this intersection of grief, gratitude, and continuity.
Through each vessel, I aim to honor the hands that shaped me while inviting others to reflect on their own histories. My practice is a conversation between past and present, interior and exterior, personal and communal—a sustained effort to tend what might otherwise be forgotten and to craft forms that hold both memory and possibility.