STNDRD presents To Tether, a project by artists Lynne Smith and Eleanor Witt Wardlaw
STNDRD at Granite City is pleased to present To Tether, a project by mother-and-daughter collaborators Lynne Smith and Eleanor Witt Wardlaw. The work is now on view, with a free public reception on Saturday, May 23 from 6:00–8:00 p.m., held in conjunction with openings at Granite City Art and Design District (G-CADD). The exhibition remains on view through Friday, June 19.
To Tether is an artifact of a time-based process informed by the invisible connection between two artists who are also mother and daughter. The work accumulated in layers as it was shuttled between Chicago and St. Louis between 2025 and 2026. It was most often entrusted to the US Postal Service and occasionally traveled through the Rust Belt by rail on Amtrak’s Texas Eagle. Provisional strategies and materials from the artists’ respective practices and domestic environments are both hidden and revealed: necklaces, remnants of a climbing rope, a bird feather, and dusty, pink meringue crumbs. The final form is an offering to tether as a form of back-and-forth play that mirrors the creative process.
Lynne Smith (b. 1969) is an artist, designer, and educator based in St. Louis, MO. Her work explores material agency, entanglement, and layered ecologies through sustained attention to landscapes and “sites-within-sites.” Poetic narratives unfold – and are retold – in weavings, sculptures, and installations. Smith teaches in the first-year foundations program at Washington University in St. Louis. She also facilitates workshops for the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, community-based organizations, and public schools. She received a 2024 Luminary Futures Grant supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation and is one of 50 artists participating in Coyote Time, Counterpublic’s 2026 Triennial.
Eleanor Witt Wardlaw (b. 2002, Portland, OR) is an artist living in Chicago, IL, who works across disciplines and with conflicting desires. She has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2024) and attended the Ox-Bow School of Art. Her work has been exhibited at Rainbo Club, Bodock, and Unda.m.93. Her EP, Night work, released in 2025, is out everywhere now.
