Savannah College senior tops in Surtex competition

HTT Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 5/23/2012 11:00:46 AM

White Plains, N.Y. - Kirby Lee Smith, a senior at Savannah College of Art and Design, was named the Grand Prize winner of the designext international student competition organized annually by the Surtex surface design show.
She is a student in the Fibers Department and received a $1,000 cash award.
Smith has already received academic scholarships from the design community and participated in juried exhibitions in Atlanta and France. After a summer internship in domestics design at Target last year, she will join the company after graduation.
"This year, 50 participants in the designext competition took the opportunity to develop portfolios that position them for entry into the surface design industry. All students have benefitted from the learning experience: to prepare work that will translate to diverse surfaces. Each year, the four winners have utilized the contacts they made at Surtex to launch promising careers," said Penney Sikalis, Surtex show manager and vp of show organizer GLM.
The panel of judges were: Nancy Fire, design director, HGTV Home Brand and Founder, Design Works International; Ragna Frodadottir, creative director, Edelkoort Inc.; Lynne Hopkins, vp of woven design, P/Kaufmann; and Robert Warden, design/creative director, Paperchase.
The judges also critiqued the portfolios of all four designext winners. In addition to Smith, they were Tai Lin Hsieh, a senior in textile design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco; Suzanne Lefebvre, a senior in the Graphic & Interior Design Department at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY; and Poppy Maxfield, a third-year student in printed textiles and surface patterns at Leeds College of Art in Yorkshire, England.