BIOGRAPHY

Frances A. Smokowski, Founder and Director of Chrysalis Studio, is an independent consultant in the fields of Fine Art, Art Education and Art Therapy. A graduate of the NY Academy of Art’s Graduate School of Figurative Art, Smokowski is a critically recognized figurative painter known for her highly personal engagement with the history if spiritual practice, cross culturally, and her compassionate address of complex social issues.

A registered and Board Certified art therapist with 20 years of clinical experience, Smokowski has sensitively, fairly and impactfully produced time limited, annual, rotating and ongoing displays, of 2D and 3D client art for schools, therapy centers and other institutions. She is known for crafting each event to benefit all participants while simultaneously catalyzing positive outcomes for the milieu, sponsors and the community at large. She has worked in her native Western NY as well as in OH, IL, MD and the District of Columbia, consistently demonstrating how the most authentic and resolved pictorial expressions carry great potential for healing their makers and, through witnessing, benefiting the artists’ support systems and society on many levels.

Inclusion has long been the hallmark of Smokowski exhibitions and special projects. In several educational settings, she orchestrated large scale temporary and permanent works where each and every participant was represented in a meaningful and personally identifiable way. The largest Smokowski public project, to date, involved successful collaboration of over 100 severely handicapped children.

Smokowski carries her ideas about the efficacy and power of the public display of art far beyond the confines of the institutions in which she was employed as an art therapist. She has an extensive exhibition record from participation in events through arts organizations and non-profits, most recently showing in a commercial gallery in New York. She has created exhibition opportunities in alternative spaces and has served select non-profits and for-profit galleries as a volunteer consultant. Her "Insight & Inspiration" exhibition was the first of its kind to be curated by an esteemed Historian from a Major Museum, presenting art created by accomplished healers. Additionally, Smokowski has, herself, served as a curator in a range of settings from her BFA Alma Mater’s elegant Gallery, to curating for the Sanctuary space of a new age spiritual center in the DC Metro Area.

While "making art that makes a difference" is her overarching philosophy, Smokowski standards of impeccability are informed by her learning exhibition design and installation in upscale frame shop galleries in Chicago and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Her love of Art History and Institutional collections supplements her understanding of Museum culture gleaned from periods of employment at The National Gallery, DC and the Art Institute of Chicago. At this time, her passion for historical and sacred Masterpieces finds expression in her work as an independent copyist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.