Cathryn Smith’s work is an exploration of the landscape of sleep. Having spent a life dealing with chronic insomnia and finding no medical solutions, she turned to artistic expression as a way to move from the role of prisoner to that of observer and participant. By juxtaposing a perceived state of sleeplessness against the desired night of a restful repose, what emerged are suggestions of terrains both terrifying and beautiful, seeming to hold answers and a path to follow embedded somewhere between the two worlds.

Embedded is part of a larger project, Points of Departure: Meditations on Mapping, on display throughout the fall of 2017 at several Rochester, NY locations including the Mercer Gallery, Monroe Community College, the University of Rochester, and Rochester Contemporary Art Center.

Cathryn Smith is a professor of English at Monroe Community College. She has published poetry in several literary magazines, including Tendril, The Bradford Review, Wordsmith, Zuzu Petals Online Quarterly and Stuff it Magazine. In 2000 she received a New York Foundation for the Arts grant to write her memoir, The Glory Walk, which received a Book of the Year Award in Public Interest/Creative Works from the American Journal of Nursing and was an award finalist for an Independent Publisher Book Award in Aging/Death and Dying.  She co-authored the play Shitty Lives with MCC colleagues which ran at MUCC during the 2015 Fringe Festival in Rochester NY.  Currently, she is working on another memoir entitled Bed chronicling her lifetime battle with insomnia.

She is also a mixed-media artist.  Recent exhibits include Images from the Camino at the Little Theatre Café in Rochester NY in April, 2015 and Boat Dreams in The Director’s Showcases of the Mercer Gallery in September, 2016. Embedded is her first large scale project.