Kiela Smith has worked in collaboration with artists, community and school groups, businesses, and city agencies to beautify public places with mosaics and murals. The combination of artistic vision and African heritage themes in her artworks is meant to touch the creative and spiritual self—the universal heart of the human experience.
In 1993, Smith worked with Evanston residents on the CPAG mural Wall of Struggle and Dreams. From 1994 to 1997, she and Mirtes Zwiersynski led elementary students on a series of interior and exterior ceramic tile mosaics at Monroe School, where they also did an indoor mural. Smith’s other CPAG projects include a doorway mosaic and concrete planters for the community art-rich Elliot Donnelley Youth Center. Smith has also created murals with children under the auspices of Art Resources in Teaching.

In 1992, Kiela Smith was named Young Artist of the Year by the South Side Community Arts Center. In 1994, she and Nina Cain were awarded a City of Chicago Percent for Art commission to execute a mosaic, Come Journey Through Corridors of Treasures, for the Pullman Library. Smith has exhibited her photography at such venues as the Museum of Science and Industry, the Indiana Black Expo, ETA Creative Arts Foundation, and the McCormick Place Black Expo. She has also worked as a photographer and researcher for the DuSable Museum of African-American History and the Field Museum.

Watermarks detail 1996, a collaborative piece by Kiela Smith-Upton, Olivia Gude, Cynthia Weiss, Mirtes Zwierzynski & Jon Pounds..


Wall of Struggle and Dreams, 1993, acrylic paint on plywood, by Kiela Smith.


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