Amanda Smith’s work explores human interpretations and experiences in landscape. Yard Times follows her shifting awareness within landscape, turning her creative attention to her backyard, a category of place with which the artist has developed a new relationship during the Covid-19 pandemic. While global societies during this public health crisis came as close to a truly shared experience than ever before, most people’s physical worlds shrank considerably. Like many people, the artist spent a lot of time in her backyard over the last four years, and has come to appreciate how her activities there became a primary way to mark time and derive meaning in an era of pandemic, climate disaster, and political upheaval.

Amanda Smith earned an MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a BA from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. She has exhibited and lectured nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in NY, the Rochester Art Center in MN, the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City, Box 13 ArtSpace in Houston, the International Quilt Museum, and Biblioteca Viva Egaña in Santiago, Chile. She has been a visiting artist at many universities including Temple University, Rome, Italy, the University of Kansas, and the University of South Carolina. Smith has been an artist-in-residence at Fljótstunga in Iceland, Arrowmont Pentaculum, Art 342 in Fort Collins, Monson Arts in Maine, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and Est-Nord-Est in Quebec, Canada. She is a senior lecturer at Indiana University.