Rains Journal Vol. 13: That Bread Girl

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July 15, 2019

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Photos: Lucka Ngo

Bread. Carbohydrates. Gluten. We all have a relationship with this particular form of sustenance: some good and some bad. New York City local, Lexie Smith, has dedicated her art practice to it, using grain as a lens to explore creativity and community, and narratives on history, design, and the environment. We met up with Lexie and her pet snake, Sam, at her new apartment in Queens to talk anecdotes of her practice and praise for the cross-cultural gift of nourishment: Bread.

Rains Journal: From scouring the internet readings with you as the subject, one can learn that you are not a self-described “bread artist.” Even if the world might attribute that to your profile, what should your business card read?

Lexie: There’s a reason I don’t have business cards. I’m not in the business of business.

RJ: Well, Lexie, for those of us who don’t know, then – who the heck are you?

L: I hope this is the hardest question. I’m a baker and artist from New York, which is where I still live and work.

RJ: Bread on Earth is the mothership to a large leg of your work. How did this come about?

L: Bread on Earth started as an attempt to hold a thematic leg of my work under an umbrella; to centralize (and distinguish from other, non-bread related efforts) the various tangents of bready research I’d started exploring. Initially I hoped to create a place where others could access that information, navigate a map of regional bread types and contribute their own experiences, but it’s become more of just a tool, a name, to point to my breed of thinking about bread critically.

RJ: Why has bread become a central theme in your work?

Read the whole interview with Lexie Smith – shop Rains Journal Vol. 13 here.