Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1958, Yvette Kaiser Smith now lives in Chicago. She received an MFA from the University of Chicago in 1994 after a 1990 BFA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas that includes the Yale Summer School of Art Norfolk, Connecticut Program. Since earning her MFA, Yvette has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions at regional museums, art centers, and university galleries throughout the United States and abroad, including Rome, Berlin, and U.S. Embassies in Moscow, Ankara, and Abuja. During these 15 years, she created new works for most of the 23 solo and 7 two-person exhibits and used the 90 plus group opportunities to develop her signature process of crocheting fiberglass and to establish her work and name in the Chicago area.

Yvette Kaiser Smith specializes in crocheting continuous strands of fiberglass into large geometric shapes. These are formed and hardened with the application of polyester resin and the use of gravity. Small finished units are sewn together with fiberglass into medium sized blocks which assemble to form a larger unit or grid structure.

Her work engages math as a structural foundation by utilizing the grid, prime numbers, the numbers e and pi, the Fibonacci sequence, and Pascal’s triangle. Yvette's three-dimensional forms are indoor, wall-based, translucent, durable, monumental lace. Using traditional methods, she creates artwork that has been contemporized by the use of industrial materials, mathematics, and the language of art and architecture. Her current work the “Identity Sequence” Series, considers identity codes: internal patterns that code the individual, external codes, and individuals and masses.

After just two years of teaching studio art and general overview of art history and art theory during the late 1990s, she began a full-time studio practice in order to fulfill her exhibition commitments. She continues teaching through occasional opportunities such as visiting artist lectures, graduate studio visits, demonstrations, and workshops. These include: Indiana University Purdue University in Ft. Wayne; Wayne State University in Detroit; Hyde Park Women’s Society in Chicago; mural class that focused on issues of public art held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; design classes at the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago; University of Chicago; Portland State University; Elmhurst Art Museum; Northeastern Illinois University; Western Washington University; Schmidt Art Center, Belleville, IL; Winter Delights Stitching Salon, Sponsored by City of Chicago Tourism; Symposium on Contemporary Textiles in Illinois, at Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, sponsored by ILNMWA; Fermilab, Batavia, IL; and Northern Illinois University, DeKalb.

Yvette’s public collections include: Old Orchard Towers, Skokie, IL; Deloitte, Chicago, IL; US Embassy, Abuja, Nigeria; Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst IL; City of Port Royal, Beaufort County, SC; UIC Hospital, Nutrition and Wellness Clinic, Chicago, IL; a 2005 City of Chicago commission for the Englewood Senior Center; and a 2008 commission for the Ritz Carlton Residences lounge, Philadelphia, PA.