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Paige Smith (April 27, 1982), aka A Common Name, is a visual artist, graphic and product designer who currently lives in Los Angeles. Smith is best known for her commercial installations and international street art project, Urban Geode, which critics claim fill “the scars and teeth of our city with a glimmer of the unexpected.”

Early Life

Smith grew up in Texas and earned her BFA in Design Communications at Texas Tech University. Soon after earning her degree, she moved to San Francisco where she began working in graphic design, building marketing materials and branding strategies for both traditional print and web clients. Her corporate clients included: Cisco Systems, MTV, PayPal and ABC Studios.

 Urban Geode

Smith, whose street moniker is a nod to the ordinariness of her birth name, is known for her outdoor “Urban Geode” project. Since 2011 when the project began, Smith’s efforts have received critical support and have been featured in print art books, online forums and traditional press sources including: LA Canvas, KTLA, The Huffington Post and The Los Angeles Times.

Urban geodes are sculptures that resemble their nature-made namesake, while themselves being formed synthetically, either out of hand cut and folded die-cut paper or individually cast resin. Rather than install the works in places that would maximize the number of people who saw them, Smith installs them in overlooked spaces instead: the cracks in between bricks where the mortar has chipped away, the inside of a broken pipe or interior of an obsolete phone booth. Her work, as one critic notes, reminds us of the “old childhood feeling that every crack or crevice could be full of adventure."

Unlike typical street art that’s largely scaled and brightly painted, finding Smith’s geodes is a longer pursuit. As one critic notes: “The pleasure in her work is derived from the fact that you might be the only person to notice them and in noticing them, become enchanted for a moment by the idea that the entire interior of the building is laden with crystals.” The geodes made from die-cut paper are particularly delicate and quickly destroyed. Smith is aware of the short lifespan of her work and says that cycle is part of the project.

 Commercial Installations

Maintaining the aesthetic of her street geodes yet imagining them on a larger scale and re-contextualizing them in a commercial space, Smith has created several installations. Among them are: The Box Geode at the Standard Hotel (2012), Deranged Amalgamation at Maker City L.A. (2014), Mining Refining at Coachella (2014), and Untitled at the Los Angeles International Airport, (forthcoming).

VereVerto

In 2013, Smith launched VereVerto, a leather handbag line designed with partner Consuelo Chozas for the urban woman. The line—born from Smith’s personal experience as a biking commuter wanting to look chic without sacrificing the contents of a flimsy purse with each bike turn. Within its first season, VereVerto has been picked up by key influential boutiques through the U.S.