Gret Sterrett Smith studied painting with Jim Gahagan at Goddard College and graduated with a BFA in 1980 from the San Francisco Art Institute, where she studied with Hassel Smith, Franklin Williams, Robert Hudson, and Angela Davis, and was part of the group of artists and poets in Jess and Robert Duncan's household and Diane Di Prima's circle. In the spring of 2024, she had a two-person show of her recent sculptures with the painter Peter Acheson at Slag & RX Gallery in New York, curated by Phong Bui Co-Founder and Artistic Director of The Brooklyn Rail. She has her studio in the Hudson Valley where she works in a variety of media. Gret Sterrett Smith's older brother Peter D. Smith did a tour of duty in the Vietnam War as an MP in the Demilitarized Zone during the Tet Offensive in 1968.