Jenny Smith (b. 1981 Victoria, BC, Canada) grew up in Calgary in the 80s and early 90s before eventually relocating back to the west coast. As a child her father worked as a guard at SpyHill Prison and a stone mason seasonally, while her mother encouraged her to memorize poetry from the likes of John Donne and Emily Dickenson. Her parents discouraged art school and so when she graduated high school she returned to Calgary briefly working at a sawmill. Searching for more she moved to Whitehorse and worked as a bartender at the Gold Pan Saloon and cook at the Tlingit childcare centre in Northern BC, until she became pregnant with her first child and transitioned to working as a paralegal in downtown Vancouver. 

Though Jenny had sketched and painted throughout her life, it wasn't until 2008 after a grim separation from her child's father that she began to truly find herself in her art. She began by painting large self-portraits in oils, and eventually people from the arts community took notice and began to welcome her and provide guidance.  It was an early morning painting, painted  "so quickly I thought it couldn't possibly be worth anything", that was accepted for the crime themed issue of a literary journal (Room Magazine) that allowed her to take herself seriously as an artist. 

Her second break rounded out her practice as an interactive-engagement artist. The West Vancouver Arts Council put out a call for a piece which engaged the community in climate awareness. It needed to be 7' tall,  had to be weather resistant, but not require any foundation and engage the community as collaborators. She recalls "I read the criteria and got up from my desk and sat by the window, closed my eyes, cupped my hands upward, and asked "please give me the idea". I then opened my eyes and saw my hands reaching up and heard "its In Your Hands".  It wasn't until much later that she reflected upon her usage of shotcrete mesh (used in construction for concrete retaining walls) for the piece and a piece she had made a year earlier (also utlizing wire grid) that she was poeticizing stone mason materials and the nuances of steel cages. This marriage of her parent's identities led her to realize that she was subconsciously attempting to unify them despite their divorce in her early childhood, leading her on a path exploring the human shadow and inner child, the impetus for her work on Pender Island collecting drawings from adult residents of what they were preoccupied with as children. While some of her motivation is iterative of the ubiquitous portrait gaze that follows the viewer, in that the art is experienced wherever one travels, it is the epistemological rebellion to what it is considered art and what it takes to be considered an artist that propels her to lay the groundwork for elements outside her control to finish what she started in her collaborations with strangers, ocean creatures, birds, and more.