Steven B. Smith (poet)

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This is the Wikipedia entry for Steven B. Smith, poet/artist/underground publisher. For the Steven B. Smith who teaches Political Science at Yale, see Steven B. Smith (professor).

Steven B. Smith (b. 1946), is an underground artist and poet from Cleveland, Ohio. He published the cult underground classic ArtCrimes, a zine influenced by the beats. [1] Smith's art and poetry uses cultural themes as found objects with a Dadaist influence. [2][3]

His life is pockmarked with colorful episodes such as stealing cars when he was thirteen, getting kicked out of the U. S. Naval Academy, armed robbery and prison. [4][5][6]

1 Early years
2 Art
3 Notoriety
4 Work
5 Cleveland Warehouse District
6 ArtCrimes
7 Tremont
8 Recent
9 References
10 External links

[edit] Early years

Smith was born in Wallace, Idaho and raised in Paradise Prairie, 20 miles outside of Spokane, Washington. He stole 13 cars when he was thirteen. [7]

In 1968 Smith was one of 13 middies ousted by the Naval Academy for smoking pot. [8] He haggled a deal with the government upon discharge; they agreed to pay for his education. [9][10]

Smith married into an east coast blue-blood family in 1969. [11]

In 1970, he was arrested for armed robbery. [12] Then he went on to receive a bachelor's degree in English and philosophy with a 3.8 GPA from Loyola College in Maryland. [13]

Smith lived in Baltimore and other cities before coming to Cleveland in 1977 [14] in pursuit of another man's wife. [15] She then divorced her husband and decided to marry someone other than Smith. [16]

[edit] Art

Smith's art assemblages started when one day instead of painting a key on a canvas, he picked it up and pasted it on the canvas. [17]

Smith's art uses iconic baubles with the affect of cheapening and attacking cultural themes. [18] The work has been characterized as "difficult and uncompromising" [19], and "repellent and grotesque", with roots from the dadaist collages of Schwitters and Rauschenberg. [20]

Materials used include rusted wire, shattered glass, obscene imagery, dead mice, the artificial leg of a dead drug dealer and sometimes other people's art. [21] [22] His work is washed in blue "corrosion", a mix of matte medium, copper powder and salt. [23] Another reviewer says Smith's use of oxidized copper makes his works appear to be fetched from the bottom of the sea. [24]

Smith uses cultural themes as found objects. [25] "I deal in symbolic juxtapositions of the odd and unwanted," Smith says. "My materials consist of cultural castoffs, sociological implications and the refuse known as suburban thought. My goals are simple; erase your labels; learn to look about ... Learn to see dead frog and rust and thus re-see yourself." [26] He says, "My art is a collaboration with the pieces." [27]

After the death of his brother Cat (Vincent Smith), Smith started exhibiting his brother's remains at his shows, leaving some of the ashes behind after each exhibit. [28]

[edit] Notoriety

Smith first gained notoriety with a piece -- "American Ego" -- in the People's Art Show at CSU. His piece was a four by three grid of polaroid snapshots, nude photos of himself in compromising positions with the American flag. [29] This piece won the "most outrageous" award at the show. [30]

The "Happening": Next, three pieces of his art were censored from a show at Tri-C West. Smith agreed to the removal as long as a "censored" notice was put on the wall in place of the missing art. The opening night poetry reading was reassigned to a remote conference room. During the reading Smith discovered that Tri-C neglected to post the notes. He wrote "CENSORED" on the wall with a ball point pen. Poet Daniel Thompson decided to read in the original gallery, and mouthed the words to his poem silently as a Tri-C codirector sanded the words off the wall.[31]

[edit] Work

Smith worked longest as a computer programmer, which helped support ArtCrimes and his art. He frequently contracted with BP. Previous occupations include sailor, milk man, life insurance salesman, avant garde theater manager, newspaper film and music critic, women's shoe salesmen, prison cook, carnival laborer and church janitor. He's also worked at Bethlehem Steel. [32] [33] [34]

Smith's "resume" is published in an article from 2000:

1950s
farm boy
cow milker
chicken/rabbit/hog waste remover
hod carrier

1960s

paper boy
car thief
electronics technician
poet
USNA midshipman
artist
husband

1970s

chemist
prison cook
bankrupt
avant-garde theatre manager
newspaper film/music critic
women's shoe salesman
adulterer
divorced [35]

[edit] Cleveland Warehouse District

Smith and his friend and frequent collaborator S. Judson Wilcox were two early "urban pioneers": artists who settled the Warehouse District in Cleveland in 1981. [36] Artists, musicians and renegades moved there to revel in Cleveland's industrial beauty. ([37]) The warehouse district was a haven. [38]

Smith and Wilcox had an "Art Behind Bars" installation in the district with mannequins, Mickey Mouse and neon tube calliope. [39]

Smith's brother -- "Cat" -- moved into the warehouse with him. [40] Cat Smith's collages were dead ringers for Schwitters'. [41]

Smith and Cat's spot in the warehouse became a gathering spot for other artists in the building and scene, including S. Judson Wilcox, Melissa Jay Craig (AKA "Field Marshal May Midwest"), Jeff Chiplis, Laszlo Gyorki, Ken Nevadomi, Randy Rigutto, Jay Clements, Beth Wolfe and others. [42] Guests were offered keepsakes of miniature toy soldiers, babies in plastic bubbles or poetry. [43]

Spaces Gallery was located on the first floor, making the warehouse the de facto epicenter of creative activity. [44]

Cat was a troubled man who eventually committed suicide. [45] After he died, Smith heard a beeping in his studio. He couldn't figure out where the beeping came from, so he thought it was the soul of his dead brother. He then found a worn-out smoke detector at the bottom of a huge pile in his studio. [46]

In another installation with Wilcox, Smith used a bag of his dead brother's ashes. He claimed to have a pact with Cat. The first to die would be included in an exhibition of the other's work. [47]

In one of the exhibitions at Spaces gallery, Smith put Cat's ashes on a pedestal. The bag was punctured by a friend and ashes spilled onto the pedestal and the floor. [48]

[edit] ArtCrimes

ArtCrimes is consistent with the style of beat-era publications from the days of Kerouac, Corso and Ginsberg. One reviewer postulates that it's the most significant publication of the Cleveland underground art scene in recent history. [49]

When not partying all night or making art, Smith wrote clever, punning poetry and read it all over town. He also participated in a couple legendary "regional art terrorist" raids in the Flats. [50]

Before making visual art, Smith crafted unique journals into which he'd juxtapose images and poetry and journal entries. These were a foreshadowing of ArtCrimes. [51] The momentum of these activities carried over into ArtCrimes.

Smith used his art and poetry to make political statements. He decided to create the cult classic ArtCrimes, a publication full of images and poems which also shared his disrespect for authority. ArtCrimes takes on the spirit of Smith's journals, like a sketchbook that's been passed around to dozens of different artists. ([52] [53]

The first issue, "If Indication Abnormal" was published in 1986. Guest editors S. Judson Wilcox, Jim Lang, Ben Gulyas, Kathy Shumay, Kathy Ireland Smith, Chris Franke, Beth Wolfe, Melissa Jay Craig and Daniel Thompson had total latitude on subsequent issues. Formats included a coloring book, a popcorn box, a video, a deck of cards, legal tablets, and a catalog for the 1989 Performance Art Festival. [54] [55]

Contributors included everyone from Bukowski and Micheline to people's pets. Ohio poets and artists included the likes of Daniel Thompson, Maj Ragain, Amy Bracken Sparks, Jeff Chiplis, Ben Gulyas, Chris Franke, Harvey Pekar, Gary Dumm, Masumi Hayashi and Ken Nevadomi. [56]

Poet Daniel Thompson (d. 2004) and Smith co-edited "Crimes in the Dark: Reel-Life Art," also known as the "popcorn box" edition of ArtCrimes. It contained coupons for events in addition to the usual melange of poetry and images. A civil rights activist and advocate for the homeless, Thompson became the first honored "Poet Laureate" for Cuyahoga County, Ohio. [57] Thompson is also known for Junkstock, a poetry, art and music festival in the 80s. The highly acclaimed festival was held in a junk yard on Pearl Road in Cleveland. [58]

All of the ArtCrimes issues have been financed by Smith. [59] Production runs were small -- a few hundred or so -- and usually given away to artists and friends. [60]

The 2002 issue -- coedited with Beth Wolfe -- was dedicated to Wayne Draznin, a professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art who died the previous year. Draznin was fond of rebellious socially-minded art. [61]

Smith's own poetry is described as "a stream-of-consciousness assault on reason and order" and "a cross between Dada and Jack Kerouac." [62]

[edit] Tremont

The affordability of Cleveland neighborhoods periodically caused mass migrations of artists. In the 80s, Smith was one of the urban pioneers to move into the Warehouse District. [63] In '85, he was one of many artists who moved from the warehouses to Tremont, in the typical pattern where artists move into undesirable but inexpensive neighborhoods, fixing up old buildings in which to live and work. [64]

Shortly after Smith's move to Tremont, Cat committed suicide. Pappy Smith died shortly after, and Mother Dwarf (Florence E. Smith) left Las Vegas to come to live with Smith. [65][66] [67]

Mother Dwarf began her art career producing collages for ArtCrimes. [68] Smith and his mother's life together became a mother-son artistic collaboration. [69]

Smith nearly died in 1991 from alcohol, and has been sober since then. [70] One notable drunken episode was after an art auction. He'd bid loudly on every piece offered. He took a walk home with Mother Dwarf. He passed a fence of barking dogs, and started to howl "in communion." He leaned up over the dogs and they bit his scalp. The next day, Smith asked Mother Dwarf why he was covered in blood. "You mean..." she said, "You don't remember the dogs?"[71]

[edit] Recent

In an interview in 2000, Smith claimed his voice was raspy "because I don't talk to anyone anymore." He'd become a reclusive whose doormat said "Go Away." [72]

He said, "I had to learn silence. People only remember the old days when I shocked people with what I said or made or did. But there's a lot of beauty in the things I've done." [73]

In 2005 Smith's life hit a series of highs and lows. His mother died, he fell in love, he retired and then discovered he had throat cancer. He published the final issue of ArtCrimes in 2006. [74]

Smith is a documentarian. His journals are not the only documentation of his life. He continues with his 2500-page web site agentofchaos.com. [75]

Smith married poet and ex-electrical engineer Kathy Ireland Smith in 2006. They began their relationship shortly after the death of Mother Dwarf in 2005. [76]

In 2006 Smith and his wife sold their home, gave away all of their possessions, and moved to Europe. [77]