Biography
Christen Smith (she/her) is a multi-modal, biracial animation artist in New York City, which is originally part of Lenapehoking, the ancestral and unceded lands of the Lenape people. Christen works in cinematic and experiential forms of animation, centering drawn aesthetics and techniques as a point of departure for spiritual discovery.
A gifted educator, Christen has been an adjunct professor of animation at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts since 2015, and has taught extensively throughout City University of New York (CUNY), including Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College, Queens College Art Department, and Hostos Community College animation program in the South Bronx. After receiving a BFA in Film & Television from Tisch School of the Arts, Christen launched her commercial arts career on the Emmy-winning preschool show, The Wonder Pets, before expanding her production reach as a producer, editor, animator, and creative director across the digital media frontiers of the 2010’s.
She was awarded a NYFA grant for new work in 2024 from the Queens Arts Fund for her animated installation and participatory meditation room, “Blessed Are Those Who Are Angry,” which premiered as a solo exhibition of her 4 new animated works in November 2024 in Long Island City, Queens.
Contemplative Uppercut
Contemplative Uppercut is a creative practice navigated by animator, educator, and filmmaker Christen Smith seeking to uncover the dynamic forces separating people from their self and from each other, through time-based works of art and academic curricula.
Artist Statement
My artistic practice is a spiritual expedition navigating the intricate terrain between the Self and the Other through drawing and animation. Rooted in my background as a character animator, my work centers themes of self-awareness, connection, and transformation. Each film and installation I create is a ritual act, an offering of presence, motion, and emotion.
In contrast to the precision of commercial animation, I embrace the line as a form of spontaneity, and the repetition of frame-by-frame animation techniques as a mode of meditation. Recent explorations have integrated social practice into my art, guided by the improvisational spirit of jazz and the elegant structure of classical compositions. Works like Blessed Are Those Who Are Angry transform Fight, Flight, and Freeze responses into shared experiences of respite and connection, inviting participants into new worlds that bridge and blur the boundaries between light and dark, private and shared, mourning and dancing.