Photography has been my passion and my way of engaging with the world for more than fifty years. I never tire of using the camera as a tool to study light. More than simply recording what is visible, photography offers the possibility of transformation: using light to reveal spatial depth, nuance, and presence that might otherwise remain unseen. This continual discovery feeds my sense of wonder and delight.
In recent years, I’ve created several studio-based image series using materials such as cut white paper, ice, sheer fabrics, and, most recently, fragments of discarded objects that I collect, assemble, and reframe through the lens. These projects allow me to strip photography down to its essentials and to explore light as a subject in its own right. I’ve come to see light as a malleable material—like clay in the hands of a potter. The resulting images are abstract, more suggestive than descriptive.
Alongside this studio practice, I regularly venture into the natural world, where I’m drawn to the ephemeral qualities of light and to the textures and patterns revealed through close observation. My process has become a dance between these two modes of working—each informing and enriching the other. The studio heightens my awareness of light’s expressive potential, while nature offers structures, rhythms, and sensations that reemerge in the studio in new form.
Photography has profoundly expanded how I see. Through the camera, I move beyond passive observation into a state of heightened awareness—where light becomes both language and subject. It is through this lens that I experience the world more fully and richly, with attentive presence and enduring curiosity.
1994 M.Arch University of Virginia School of Architecture, Charlottesville, VA
1983 BFA Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY (photographic illustration)
Selected Exhibitions
2025
Innerwoven, Beverley Street Studio School Gallery, Staunton, VA (solo)
Botanical Art Festival, Jefferson School City Center, Charlottesville, VA
50th Anniversary Exhibition, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
2024
Treelines, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA (two person)
2023
Landscape, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
Collage, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
2022
Then And Now, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
2021
Fluidity Of Form, Cultural Art Center at Glen Allen , Glen Allen, VA (solo)
Black & White, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
2019
Fluid Transformations, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA (solo)
PHOTOcentric 2019, Garrison Art Center, Garrison NY
Group Show, Carpe Diem Gallery, Charlottesville, VA
Group Show, Possum’s Store Gallery, Criglersville, VA
2018
Fluid Passages, Chroma Projects Gallery, Charlottesville, VA (solo)
2017
Transmutations, Staunton Augusta Art Center, Staunton, VA (solo)
Emerge, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA (three person)
2016
Flight, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
Three McGuffey Artists , University of Virginia Darden School of Business, Charlottesville, VA
UNBOUND5! , Candela Books + Gallery, Richmond, VA
Rock, Paper . . . , McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA (solo)
2015
Past, Present & Future (40th Anniversary), McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
2014
Paper: On, Off, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
Holiday Group Show, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
Open Space, Cary Beth Cryor Gallery, Coppin State University, Baltimore, MD
2013
Open Space, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VASummer Group Show, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
2003
YAMA: Exploring the Life of a Japanese Farming and Arts Community in Brazil , McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA (solo)
2002
Impressions, New Image Gallery, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA (solo)
2001
Scott Smith: Recent Photographs, Photo Arts Gallery, Charlottesville, VA (solo)
Selected Bibliography
2018 Sathe, Jane Dunlap. “Stranger Than Nonfiction.” The Daily Progress, May 17, 2018.
2016 Washington Post INSIGHT photography blog, “A Photographer’s Poetic Images of Paper”, October 2016.
2013 C-VILLE Abode, March 2013 (cover).
2012 Quale, John D. Sustainable. Affordable, Prefab: The ecoMOD Project. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012 (cover, photography).
2011 Inform: Architecture and Design, 2011 (photography).
2009 Van Lengen, Karen. Urgent Matters: Designing the School of Architecture at Jefferson's University. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009 (cover, photography).
2008 Oxford American, June 2008, p 58-59 (photography).
2007 Paisea: Landscape Architecture Review (Valencia, Spain), October 2007 (photography)
2006 Virginia Living, August 2006, p 92-93 (photography).
2004 Architecture Magazine, September 2004, p 60-67.
2003 Latter, Ruth. "Photos Allow Us to Witness Their History." The Daily Progress, February 22, 2003.