Lucy’s Art

Welcome to Lucy’s art practice web site. This site contains pictures and documents relating to Lucy’s undergraduate, postgraduate and professional practice in fine art.

To find out more about Lucy Smith, please see below.

To read about Lucy’s work on the role of art in the public education curriculum, click here.

For information on Lucy’s research practice, please click this link.

About Lucy Smith

Foucault’s pendulum sculpture trial

Lucy Smith graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, with a first class B.A. (Hons) Fine Art degree in the summer of 2019. She was also awarded the University’s Alastair Smart Memorial Prize for Sculpture for her work exhibited in the 2019 degree show.

Lucy works in bronze, wood, print and composition. She allows these materials to develop possibilities and draw out ideas, and uses a range of techniques that eliminate, reduce, rotate, invert, overlay, crop, reverse and ‘sound’ her ideas, thus demonstrating the way a concept can be perceived in unexpected ways.  

Lucy is now completing research for a practice-led PhD at the University of Dundee, and is presently finalising her thesis. Her subject of research is in the role of art in improving the comprehension and communication of science. With a research title: Making the Conceptual Tangible: The Role of Art in the Communication of Science  she is asking the following questions:

Can art be effective in making abstract scientific concepts more accessible?

How might art maximise observation, questioning, critical thinking and learning?

How effective, for example, might kinetic sculpture, performance and sound art be in capturing interest in, communicating, and aiding comprehension of abstract concepts?

To address these questions Lucy makes sculpture that visibly and audibly expresses particular abstract or conceptual phenomena from physics and mathematics, e.g wavelike behaviour, harmonic resonance or the relationship between waves and music.

Lucy hypothesises that access to difficult concepts can be eased by harnessing art in a multi-modal way, through focusing on subject overlap between maths, physics and art, and through understanding the individual’s learning style and their response to the unique language of art. In particular, Lucy focusses on inclusivity and contexts for learning.

Lucy’s creative approach to interdisciplinary research highlights the value of art as significant for knowledge acquisition and understanding perspectives. An important aspect involves addressing a culture where there is a feeling that maths and science are difficult, leading to disengagement early in education. To promote accessibility and the beauty of mathematics and science in their many expressions of the universe is key to encouraging enjoyment and confidence in learning.