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Nell Smith Prints
Nell Smith is an illustrator and printmaker who set up her practice here in 2008. Her work playfully explores intuition and chance through spontaneity and the physicality of printmaking.
Her unique multi-layered screen prints are made by building up blocks of colour combined with painterly mono screenprinting. She develops contemporary, expressive compositions with an uplifting use of colour.
Nell’s most recent collection of mono screen prints, ‘Almanac’, explores the changing seasons, deeply rooted in British folklore. Made over the last 12 months, the prints investigate marking time when time feels meaningless. Ostara is the vernal equinox when the day and night are in equilibrium, and the sun is gaining strength.
She graduated from Leeds College of Art in 2003, with a BA Hons in Printed Textiles and Surface Pattern Design and then went on to complete an MA in Textiles at Manchester School of Art. Nell is an affiliate maker here at Manchester Craft and Design Centre and you can find her work in Studio 9 on the ground floor alongside Devine Design.
She joined Hot Bed Press printmaker’s studio in 2014. In 2016 she was awarded the David Cantor Memorial Award from the Devon Guild of Craftsmen. In 2020 she was awarded an a-n Time Space Money bursary, funded by the Arts Council, and won the Handprinted prize from PrintFest Ulverston.
She has exhibited her work widely, both at events such as Art& York and the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, and in independent galleries, including Cambridge Contemporary Crafts, Mostyn Gallery and Arteria Gallery.
