NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST: VIRTUAL ARTIST TALK WITH SARAH SMELSER

THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2026 @ 7PM ET

Join MGNE 6th National exhibition artist Sarah Smelser for her talk Not All Who Wander Are Lost. In this virtual talk, Sarah addresses how a walking practice and studio practice overlap to generate abstract landscapes. While navigating a labyrinth of trails in Skopelos, Greece; sliding through muddy footpaths in County Mayo, Ireland; pacing the streets of Chicago; exploring residential neighborhoods in San Francisco’s Bay Area; climbing the sun scorched hills of Santa Cruz, CA; and hiking in New Mexico’s Sandia Mountains, the artist uses a camera and observation to collect images of organic forms, hard-edged shapes, plotted boundaries, and patterns fundamental to the natural and human-made world.

Sarah Smelser has been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center; Franz Masereel Center, Artica Bilbao, Kala Art Institute, Jentel Artist Residency, Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, Anchor Graphics, Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Tamarind Institute, and Remarque Print Workshop. In 2022 she was a research associate at the Contemporary Print Media Research Center at University of California Santa Cruz. Her work is in such collections as Readers’ Digest Association, New York Public Library, Library of Congress, Hallmark Corporate Collection, Microsoft Corporate Collection, and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.

Smelser received her BA from University of California Santa Cruz, and her MA and MFA from the University of Iowa and is a professor in the Wonsook Kim School of Art at Illinois State University in Normal, IL.

This virtual webinar will take place online via Zoom. Free admission, but registration is required via Zoom. Open to the public. For questions, please contact connect@mgne.org.

To watch the recording of this artist talk, click here.

Images | Top: Sarah Smelser in her studio. Courtsey of the artist. | Artwork: Sarah Smelser, Hope I. Monotype.