Haw Contemporary is pleased to announce an upcoming solo exhibition by Debra Smith, Walking in Traffic, the artist’s fourth with the gallery. The exhibition will present new works through which the artist furthers her exploration of vivid compositions through the use of vintage textiles, creating works that display a controlled and exuberant chaos of pattern and design.

Walking In Traffic is a meditation on movement – hesitation and trust, chaos and flow. Inspired by a moment in Cairo, where a young man I’d met the night before in the hotel restaurant reappeared just as my mother and I stood stranded before six relentless lanes of traffic. When I asked how to cross, he simply said with calm certainty, “You just have to go, They will stop for you.“  Then, with quiet confidence, he guided us forward, and what had seemed impossible, became fluid and instinctive.

That same trust – stepping into uncertainty with faith – is echoed in my artistic practice when I enter my studio. But in this relentless political climate, where chaos overwhelms and uncertainty stretches endlessly, creating feels like an act of defiance – both necessary, and impossibly difficult. Some days the weight of it all dulls instinct; other days the work itself becomes the only way forward. 

As a third-generation textile artist, my work is deeply inspired by the passions and explorations of my mother and grandmother, women who instilled in me a reverence for fabric – its history, its makers, and the memories it holds. Working with vintage textiles, I honor the hands that wove them before me, preserving their essence, while transforming them into a contemporary narrative.

Through intuitive cutting, piecing, and layering, each work becomes more than material – it is a bridge between generations, a conversation across cultures, and a declaration that even in uncertainty, we continue forward, shaping what comes next.

Debra Smith (b. 1971, Kansas City, Missouri) is a contemporary textile artist known for her abstract fabric collages that blur the boundaries between fiber art, painting, and drawing. Raised in Hannibal, Missouri, she grew up in a creative household surrounded by textiles, an early influence that continues to shape her practice.

Smith studied at the Italian Academy of Fashion & Design and Lorenzo de Medici in Florence, Italy, before earning a BFA in Fiber from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1993. She later received an Associate Degree in Applied Science from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York in 2002.

While living in Brooklyn for over a decade, Smith began sourcing vintage silks—particularly deconstructed Japanese kimonos—from New York’s Garment District. These found materials became central to her process, offering embedded histories and emotional resonance that she recomposes through intuitive cutting, sewing, and layering.

In 2004, Smith returned to Kansas City, where she continues to live and work. Her compositions draw on the improvisational rhythms of jazz and the structural complexity of modernist abstraction. Each piece begins without a plan, allowing the fabric’s innate character to guide the work, resulting in bold, poetic visual statements.

Smith’s work challenges conventional ideas about textiles and “women’s work,” repositioning fiber as a medium of intellectual and emotional depth. Her collages have been widely exhibited in both national and international venues and are held in numerous public and private collections.

“I am not a poet or someone who draws,” she says. “But my use of vintage textiles brings a history, a weight, a poetry to the work before I even begin to cut, sew, and piece it back together.”