keeping art in our everday lives!
Sierra Smith was born in North Carolina and was the second of five children. Her father was a lifelong horse trainer and rider, and Sierra was the only one of her siblings who shared her father’s passion. As a little girl, Sierra was always in trouble for her “creative expression”. She was either painting on her clothes, the walls, her brothers and sisters, or "remodeling" her father's dress shirts or her mother's favorite tablecloths. Her propensity to be "creative" was so unpredictable that her parents quickly learned they needed to provide her with more structured avenues for her artistic expression.
Sierra began painting portraits as well as still life watercolors in high school and participated in many summer “boardwalk beach” art shows in Virginia until she moved to the mountains of North Carolina in 1980 where marriage and small children put a temporary halt to her career as an artist. She moved to Boulder, CO in 1988 for work and then moved to Saratoga in 2004.
Some of Sierra’s most vivid memories from childhood are those sitting in front of the TV with her dad, watching all the classic western TV shows, which could be the reason for her lifelong love and fascination with vintage western memorabilia....old farm tools and picture frames or used horse tack and rusted spurs. Anything that had a cowboy or a horse on it was a piece of artwork just waiting to be born!
Sierra lives in Saratoga full time with her husband, Bob, their three horses and Border Collie, Rowdy. Her passion and love of horses is alive and well, and she continues to be an avid horseback rider.
After her father's last brood mare was put down, he left the horse lifestyle behind and boxed up and sent her some things from his barn he thought Sierra might like to have. Not wanting to relegate them to a cardboard box in the closet, she constructed a barbed wire wreath which incorporated many of the item he'd sent to her. Afterwards, she received some requests to create other custom pieces, the ball was rolling and she continues to collect vintage western artifacts which she uses to create her unique, western pieces of artwork. Each is carefully selected and tells a story. Sierra pulls all these bits of metal and leather together and her end result is a masterful collage.
In addition to mixed media pieces, Sierra does acrylic paintings and clay sculpture horses. Her work is shown at the Laura M Gallery in Saratoga and has been collected by patrons from all over the union. She recently won “Best Three Dimensional” at the Platte Valley Arts Festival with a collage of belts depicting an underwater scene.
