Star Smart
United States
@_starsmart
I’m a hippie kid and a free spirit who was always encouraged to create. Environmentalism and social justice were ingrained in me while living in a commune with my parents. Traveling across the United States, picking fruit, and living adventures, shaped my sense of wonder and remain my greatest inspiration.
After my unconventional childhood, I continued to forge my own path. Emancipated at an early age, the world became mine to explore. My travels and experiences, both joyful and painful, shaped the woman and the artist I am today.
My practice led me to develop signature techniques and materials. I instinctively give life to what others might call garbage—gathering plastic waste to create my own pliable material. My work draws from abstraction, minimalism, Dadaism, ikigai, music, and a deep dedication to legacy. I don’t wish to recreate the created; I seek to manifest imagination itself.
Recently, I relocated from Miami to Cincinnati, wanting to slow down and rediscover hills, historic architecture, and materials absent in Florida. In my new 100-year-old studio, I’m eager to work on a larger scale and reconnect with the tactile roots that define my art.
Much of my work evokes organic material, which pleases me, as I’m inspired by flowers, mushrooms, molds, fungi—everything that creeps and crawls through the forest. I began to imagine a space where my invented forms could grow: the Heteromorphic Forest, a world that looks and feels organic while being formed entirely from recycled materials.
