Lauren Smith received her B.A. in Visual Arts from Ramapo College of New Jersey in May 2008 with concentrations in Art History and Drawing & Painting. Since graduating she has been incorporating into her work over two years experience in historic preservation architecture.

Lauren is interested in real estate consumerism, aesthetics of beauty in architecture, gender relationships, and most glaringly, the importance of social responsibility.

Lauren lives in Pennington, NJ. She is currently an artist in residence at New York Studio Gallery and an upcoming artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center.

During the two-year period I worked in historic preservation architecture, I developed an inclination towards a specific type of canary tracing paper typically used by architects for sketching. I began to create drawings with this paper using the visual language of architecture.

The content of my work is typically residential architecture. My creative process begins with a physical survey of a given building: I painstakingly record every measurement. I then draw the building to scale in a CAD program. Using ink and marker, I trace the CAD drawings onto tracing paper in high detail. Finally, I use varnish to collage the tracing paper onto canvas. The result is a drawing disguised as a painting.