Asbury University Art & Design Professor Receives Grant from Great Meadow Foundation

Supporting London Exhibition Travel Before Art Residency in Greece for Asbury Art & Design Professor

Asbury University Professor and Department Chair of Art & Design Margaret Park Smith recently received an Artist Professional Development Grant from the the Great Meadow Foundation for Summer 2026. This grant will support Smith in traveling to London to examine several specific contemporary art exhibitions prior to a 3-week art residency in Skopelos, Greece.

The award from the Great Meadows Foundation allows me to spend time in London viewing contemporary art exhibitions prior to an extended artist residency in Greece.”

Margaret Park Smith Asbury University Professor and Department Chair of Art & Design 

“The time in London will prime my perspective for making bold, informed, and critically engaged work. The focus of the residency in Greece is to create an opportunity for dialogue and a cultural exchange among the cohort of invited international artists; it will afford me the opportunity to develop new work, informed by the unique exposure to slow time in the Sporades Islands and the community of artists. My capacity to make work in new ways will be stretched and I want to bring fresh inspiration into that time and back home to Kentucky.”

In London, one exhibition Smith plans to visit includes “Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia, and the Pacific” at the V&A in Kensington. The exhibit features work by over 40 contemporary artists from the Asia Pacific area. Their artwork remains situated within global contemporary art while also having evolved out of deeply traditional practices.

“As an artist using a traditional craft material to address the contemporary, ‘Rising Voices’ is of particular interest to me,” Smith said. “The show features work arising from longstanding artistic traditions and deep material knowledge, having evolved to reflect a global contemporary awareness. The development of craft practice amidst ever-changing culture is the fusion I seek within my own practice. I stand to gain a lot from studying this collection, whose objects boast a primal aura, touch on the magical, and present the symbolic in distinctly new forms.”

Smith teaches Art & Design classes to Asbury university undergraduate students, many of whom have been accepted to graduate school at Yale University School of Art, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Columbia university, and more!

Since 2005, Smith and her husband, Josh (Asbury University Professor of Art & Design), have been collaborating as Dovetail Practice. Josh’s background in printmaking, photography, and contemporary art infuses a unique perspective on the traditional craft of clay. Margaret’s background brings a deep understanding of the material and process.

Their work was added to the New Museum of Contemporary Art (NYC) museum shop and accepted for inclusion in the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) 2024 annual and American Museum of Ceramic Art’s (AMOCA) Fahrenheit 2024 exhibition. Recently, they have had a renewed desire to share their artwork among Christian communities, beyond Asbury University. In 2025, they were invited to be visiting artists at George Fox University in Newberg, OR and displayed a 2-month exhibition at Wheaton College entitled, “Attention Bridge: Practicing Values Differently.”

Great Meadows Foundation is a grant giving foundation, launched in 2016 by contemporary art collector and philanthropist Al Shands (1928-2021). Named for the home that Al and his late wife Mary created, the mission of Great Meadows Foundation is to critically strengthen and support visual art in Kentucky by empowering our community’s artists and other visual arts professionals to research, connect, and participate more actively in the broader contemporary art world.