Papier quadrillé, bloc de feutre, crayon de couleur et polycrayon, 2025
This work is a sculptural drawing from Smillie’s ongoing Felt Drawing series. Here the term “felt” works as a double entendre: felt as material, as felt furniture protectors pattern the paper’s surface; and felt as a touch point, as the felt pads become the raised surface for safely manipulating the delicate paper during the drawing process. The paper for this work is sourced from an early-1900s grocer’s ledger. Scrawled annotations in pencil by the original owner denote items purchased and blend with Smillie’s intervention of pencil crayon and polycrayon, forming a collaboration across decades.
Bronson Smillie is a Montréal-based artist whose practice is situated at the intersection of drawing and sculpture. Working with dormant objects, often analogue castaways of late capitalism’s obsession with digital efficiency, Smillie formulates his own visual systems of logic and mark-making to release them from their defunct state, side-stepping their original function to centre their aura. Through this release, Smillie creates conditions for the reconsideration of obsolete material culture that, once ubiquitous, has become marginal.
Smillie holds a BFA in painting and drawing from Concordia University. Recent solo presentations include Universalia at Pangée (Montréal), Almost Begin at Afternoon Projects (Vancouver), and A Place for Everything at april april (New York). His work is held in the public collections of Scotiabank, Stanford University, and Fidelity Investments.