Exploring the ideas of life outside of our physical encounters and linear understanding of interacting with space-time.
We move through life with varying degrees of available energy. Valence is a four-panel, wall-sized meditation on human potential.
A response to the digital world in various representations of a more visceral approach to canvas.
Returning to the foundation of art as basic communication during a time when language of all forms is being deconstructed.
A line without a guide is a constant force of the feeble attempt of nature to maintain order in and of itself.
Drawing began as an obsession and turned into an almost meditative practice. This is a rotating selection of illustration work.
This is an illustrated collection of questions regarding time and identity, with visual concepts constructed to form a narrative.
Exploring the space between words and images, arranging scattered thoughts between photographs and found notebooks, this book is an exploration of dying media.
One hundred copies of this book were printed, each further manipulated by hand in a large scale experiment in the idea of small differences and the concept of originality.
A digital sketchbook constructed around the idea of exploring the concepts of inspiration, influence and appropriation in voice.
My pissed-at-love submission to the 2012 Sketchbook Project, available in full at their digital library.
Part digital sketchbook, part expression and part coping mechanism, this collection of collage work was torn from a bad summer.
A single edition collage tape & glue book from 2010 centered on capturing the heart break adult life can bring in the world.
A drone-and-piano-driven, two-song, fifteen-minute sound project about time as a source of personal renewal.
An ongoing collaborative umbrella for working with a variety of artists and musicians on sound-based projects.
Shrieks in dark rooms, gale force wind guitar sounds, and an echo of hope in a storm of despair.
Music videos would not be the proper term but it wouldn't be incorrect, either.
For four years I've been doing the identity and various print collateral for the annual First Exposures benefit auction.
Logo design is a specific enjoyment of mine within the world of identity design and branding. This is a selection of marks in use.
While it's a new experience, designing for the mobile environment is a new and smaller standard for information consumption.
As Art Director and a senior designer, I oversaw the development and production of the brand style guidelines for Zinio in 2011.
Designing record covers is certainly on my list for "Things I Like More Than Most," and these are a few examples.
These two San Francisco-based nonprofits collaborated over a joint summer program I assisted in teaching and designing for.
A five-issue internet-based zine series about the politics of life, featuring original work as well as photography by Brenton Salo and select single issue contributions.
Propaganda posters for left-leaning types and other design endeavors for the Pinterest feed of 21st century protest.
Digital cameras seek to fix 'faults' in the photographic process that I use to explore our sense of reality.
An ongoing series of film-based street photography taken on various travels around and through different parts of the USA.
Street photography from ten dark days travelling through Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague and Zurich.
A series spanning a few years where I would photograph any empty self-serve I came across in San Francisco.
Over the course of the Occupy movement, I visited five camps and documented as much as possible along the way.
Two series—one in Portra color slide film, the other in high-speed black and white—from two weeks navigating through Morocco.
Using instant film and creative sources, this ongoing series is an examination of abstraction as individual pieces of a whole.
A collection of film photographs from taking the month of April in 2012 to travel around the country of Japan.
From mid-2009 through mid-2012, I lived in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco and took my digital camera everywhere.
An all-smartphone gallery featuring selections from years of having an iPhone around to use as a camera when necessary.
Welcome to Distorted Perspective. A brief introduction—
—Colin Smith. Born 1982. Some punk rock kid turned multidisciplinary artist & graphic designer-type. An Alaskan in Oregon by way of New England, Georgia, Texas and California looking for hope in the wind. Working in the various languages of truth, systems and identity.
I create works of assembly. Taking a variety of disparate components in any given medium and attempting to build a cohesive whole, I look to mimic the disorder and confusion our conflicted, human lives end up creating naturally through time. My focus is not to communicate through any single process but rather create a language that translates across aesthetic approach; a message that resonates by any means of interaction.
E-Mail: colin at distorted perspective
Instagram: @aglowinthestatic, @colin.smith.art
Distorted Perspective was registered in 1999; it has taken many forms since. Work from the project galleries is 2009-2017. All original content is © to Colin Smith. Please link back to work featured on blogs; contact for any other rights to republication.
The site is a custom built WordPress theme based in the Skeleton framework. The front page utilizes the Responsive Slides script. It is typeset in Bookman JF, Acumin and Vendetta via Typekit.
Jacob Edwards, a softer world, Carey Young, Matt Dorfman, Neasden Control Centre, void(), Jordan Swartz, Leica Blog, Carola Di Poi, The Baffler, Ilir Bajraktari, Ai Weiwei, Brand New, Noele Lusano, Dane Pollok, McSweeney's, Josh Mason, Artsy, Heidi Uhlman, Design Observer, LOKI, 99% Invisible, Rob Morton, William Basinski, Constellation, Matthew Woodson, AFRU, In B#, This Isn't Happiness, Ryan McCune, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, {ths}, Banksy, Morning Breath, Sarah Symmonds, Chapo Trap House, AWAKE, Hyperallergic, Jessica Clary, Manual, Contemporary Art Daily, Jeanne Fries, Shea Serrano, Robert Singler, Edward Tufte, process.life, Digg, Jacobin, Alex Webb, Jenny Holzer, Art21, Jeremy Okai Davis, David Carson
* - Denotes group show