About - Gregory Smith Art

Gregory Hampton Smith was born in 1941 in San Francisco to Margaret and Clifford Smith. In 1942 the Smiths moved to Fairbanks Alaska, where Mr. Smith supervised a gold-dredging operation at Livengood, north of Fairbanks. Fairbanks became Gregory’s childhood home.

During WWII, FDR shut down Mr. Smith’s gold operation, which never regained momentum at war’s end. In 1949, the Smiths relocated to Dallas, Texas, Mrs Smith’s childhood home, as they thought its climate would help Gregory’s asthma. But it became worse. Often confined to bed, Gregory continued making crayon drawings of such subjects as Mount Palomar Observatory, a raccoon washing its meal in a stream, a wolf howling at the moon. The only art-related exhibit he remembers from Dallas was at its Museum of Art - of models constructed from Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks.

In 1951, Mr. Smith secured employment at the Atomic Energy Commission, so the Smiths moved again to Arlington. Virginia, with easy access to Washington D.C. - with its great museums of art. Visiting them began Gregory’s art education and stimulated his enthusiasm for art as an occupation. By the time his fifth grade class went on a field trip to the National Gallery, he had already been there and picked out a favorite: a Bather by Renoir. The foggy atmosphere of Heaving Coals by Moonlight by J.M.W.Turner fascinated him, as it seemed to drift outward from the picture into the gallery. He made many drawings in his teen years of inside their house and yard. However his interests ranged widely, from biology, geology, physics, psychology and creative writing. A description of a visit to a live performance of Rhythm and Blues artists at the Howard Theater so interested Gregory’s writing teacher, she submitted it to the National Merit Scholarship, but it did not win. His winning of two art awards prompted his art teacher to suggest studying art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. He was accepted, and traveled to Pittsburgh in August of 1959. His academic career was quite unsteady, and he was threatened with dismissal from the department of Painting and Design.

However, in the fall of 1961, two important things happened: First, his painting teacher, Roger Anliker, assigned an “Absolute Realism” project in which students were expected to render in three stages; outline, value study and final full color, still lifes that he had set up around the studio. Smith had seen a Durer woodcut depicting an artist drawing with the aid of a gridded frame, so he made one out of mat board with black thread strung across its window - through which he viewed the still life for the outline drawing. When Anliker came by, Smith worried he would think he was cheating, but Anliker knew the woodcut and was impressed at a student showing ingenuity. Smith’s value study was regarded as the best in the class.

The second important stage of Smith’s development was meeting Joseph Fodor, a retired Hungarian physicist who became Smith’s mentor until he passed away in 1965. When Fodor saw Smith’s value study he said his work was to other student work like “heaven and earth.” Recognizing Smith’s talent for realism, he inspired Smith into seeing art as a cause to be championed. Fodor believed 20th century art had been damaged by a cultural illness which rejected the past and aspired to rebel against society and its traditional expectations of art and artists. He urged Smith to begin making copies after Michelangelo, as he had understood human anatomy more profoundly than even Leonardo. He also encouraged the study of art history, as a way of healing the rupture caused by Modernism.

He also encouraged Smith to protest American involvement in Vietnam - which determined Smith’s opinions until 2004, when a reading of Mona Charen’s Useful Idiots reversed his opinion. Under Fodor’s influence, Smith enrolled in the University of Pittsburgh’s graduate program in Art History. But with insufficient grades, he was dismissed from the department at the end of 1964. Depression about this among other things led Smith to consider suicide every day for the month between March 8 and April 8, 1965, during which he stopped visiting Mr. Fodor. That self-destructive urge faded away and he resumed visiting, but Fodor’s life ended in October of that year. While enrolled at Pitt, Smith had begun working at its Frick Fine Arts Library. He continued there until March of 1967, when he traveled to Grand Junction, Colorado to stay with his father and second wife, and seek employment. Failing to find a job there, he returned to Pittsburgh to work at the University Book Center, where he remained until March of 2003. He had continued copying, but in the late 60s, he began going out to do pastel landscapes from life. Such landscapes became his major occupation. But in 1970, he met his future wife, Carole Adams, who had just begun working at the Book Center. Her beauty became a major inspiration to him, and he made many drawings.

For Smith’s New York trip to find a dealer, read the autobiographical TRIAL RUN

TRIAL RUN by Gregory Smith

Beyond black-and-white striped barriers, yellow bulldozers pushed tumbling hills of brown earth in a pit stretching across both lanes. I’d been cruising through shaded neighborhoods of well-kept rural homes, wondering why so few cars travelled from Pittsburgh to New York. I backed and turned to retrace the country highway, eventually ascending the curving ramp of the cloverleaf I should have taken. A few miles farther - through air filled with warm white light, unfocused as if filtered through frosted glass - sky-elements came to earth: a field of thick mist enveloped a woman walking beside a farm-house. On the right below me, a large white cloud rested in a gray valley.

At midnight, I crossed the vast, light-streaming bridge into the city, then turned down a few blocks to the hotel. The deskman, annoyed at my having been assured a room, directed me to a hotel farther south, where a middle-aged maroon-jacketed gentleman led me to the end of a narrow seventeenth-floor corridor. He entered on the left, turned on the light to look around, then stood aside for me to enter. After gravely explaining the workings of the locks, he advised me to leave my luggage open so robbers wouldn’t have to slash them.

I parked in a nearby garage giving a discount to hotel residents, its OPEN 24 HOURS sign contradicted by a chain-link gate across the entrance, with two other driveways marked EXIT ONLY DO NOT ENTER in bright red neon. Wondering if the 24 hours had passed, I called out to ask if they were in business.
“Yes!”
“Where do I enter?”
“Right there!,” the attendant pointing to one of the exits, which I drove into, then walked over to the sliding window of his shallow booth to get my claim ticket. Having seen them ejected by harshly buzzing boxes, I wasn’t used to getting one from a human. Yellow light glanced across his lean, mustached face as he carefully filled it out, asking “Ote? “ five times before I understood “Hotel?”. When I re-entered my car to drive up the ramp, he shouted “No - no!” and pointed to himself. Ahead I saw the elevating platform to lift cars to upper levels. I got out to surrender my keys, catching a last dim glimpse of the stack of framed pastels on the rear seat of my gray hatchback. I looked back as I walked away, imagining a crane hoisting my car onto a boat.

I called Carole long-distance from a pay phone. While we spoke of already missing each other, a chubby pink-shirted man vomited white liquid onto a corner of a building, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before walking on, bent over, unsteady. After we hung up, I went into a pancake house, hoping for a midnight breakfast, but left after figuring twelve dollars on the menu. I barely saw the counterman shrug to the waitress - and heard a murmured “What’s with him?” A block away, I bought a hamburger and Pepsi for 3.19 at a Howard Johnson’s on Times Square.

When I first entered my room, I thought I saw movement by the pillow. I flipped back the bedspread, then the sheets. After snatching the pillow to study the mattress, headboard, wall and floor, I pulled open the closet, finding no bugs. I still suspected the bellhop of preceding me so they could disappear behind the pale green which coated the baseboards and bathroom walls.

Countless washings had left the sheets threadbare and fluffy, shroud-like. The pillows were dead slabs. Lying on my back with my eyes closed, I imagined stone angels at my bed-corners, but feeling vulnerable, I curled over to one side, leaving the night-table lamp lit so I could see with one scanning eye.

Several wakeful hours later, I placed one knee in the plastic armchair, rested a forearm on the bumpy top of the pale green radiator, pulled the window shade to let it rise and stared at a tall building silhouetted by the emerging blue. In one tiny cell of its glass-wall grid, a man vacuumed an office floor. I turned on the TV, switching between an exercise show of valiantlygrinning gymnasts, an interview of a handsome negro woman explaining why she chose to sing only gospel music and a goofy comedy about a pantalooned genie-girl cloning Sammy Davis, Jr. I took out my books on New York dealers, made a list of those having shown realist work and marked them on a map.

At 8:30 I cleaned up, put on a dark blue pin-stripe suit and went out for breakfast. The lobby full of field-tripping teenagers brought back visiting the United Nations with my ninth-grade French class - and seeing “Picnic” at Radio City Music Hall, in adolescent awe of Holden and Novak’s mating dance. Later that night, after a gruff house detective, hearing laughter, had hustled a girl out of our bathroom, we threw snowballs down from the fire escape - spinning to powder before they hit traffic.

Much later, during a convention of college store buyers at the Hilton, the city had been in another kind of top form: fresh, breezy and blue-skied. I had hoped it would be so now, but this morning the sky was white and hot, the air close from a recent rain. A construction site barrier composed of spare doors and plywood forced me out onto asphalt patched and rumpled. A titanic billboard advertising a production of Othello dominated the square. My portfolio looked like a briefcase, but my reflected image, glancing from store windows, was too tall and thoughtful for an office-bound businessman. I ate in a coffee shop that had an autographed photo of Telly Savalas by the cash register, then caught a bus that took me north on Madison to where the dealers are.

I began with Coe Kerr, the representative of Andrew Wyeth - my hero at Carnegie Tech - his son Jamie, as well as James Bama, a portrayer of weatherbeaten cowhands.

I stood on the sidewalk for a minute before going up the steps. Inside was a small room decorated with drawings and watercolor sketches by the Wyeths, with a stairway at the back. At a desk sat a slender gray-haired lady in a gray suit. She looked up from her paperwork and asked, in a cultivated tone, if she could help me. I had silently spoken my reply many times; it came of itself:
“I’m an artist; I have photographs of my work.”

She replied that she was sorry, but they were not looking at new art. When I asked if that was usual with established galleries, a trace of anxiety appeared in her eyes - perhaps fear of my persistence, or regret at bearing bad news. She said she didn’t know, then asked if I had tried Soho, a district of dealers more receptive to unknowns. Before I left, I looked more closely at an Andrew Wyeth gouache of a nude negro woman lying in the grass, face hidden. She looked as dry and dead as barnwood.

Outside, I spotted the Alan Stone Gallery, which had given Richard Estes, the photo-realist of city-scapes, his first New York show. I went up to the entrance door, then stepped back and walked around the corner. I stood thinking for a while, feeling a bit conspicuous, but I could have been waiting for a bus. I went back to the entrance, peered through the little window, had a split-second fantasy of a genial, receptive dealer, but all I could see was half of a chair and a corner of a framed poster.

I walked over to a subway stairwell, unzipped my portfolio, propped it on the iron railing and looked through it once more. The pictures looked good to me - but out of place. The expanding rays of the Arches Park sunset didn’t connect with photo-images of pick-up trucks or fast-food still lifes. The portrait of Carole with her hair up and arms folded, absorbed in her own feminine tenderness, expressed affection, a feeling alien to the realist revival.

I started walking slowly back down south on Madison, looking at the windows of the galleries, in no mood to play the hopeful chump, or to plod through this Soho place, where I had never been. I came to Noortman and Brod, with three floors of gray velvet walls displaying fine works by Dutch and French masters. When I asked the attractive lady with long black hair if I should leave my case at the desk, she smiled and said, “If you like.” She seemed happy to see me. I wondered if she thought I was a collector, if I looked good in my suit, or if graciousness was just her way. I began to make a rule for visiting commercial galleries: Never reveal oneself as an artist. Dress well and keep them guessing.

At the top of the stairway was a large harbor scene by Guillaumin. Its big blue sky and playful white clouds made me want to do one - a painting that would make the spectator want to take a deep breath. In the next room were some darkly windblown landscapes by George Michel.

As I stepped back down to the street, I felt a wave of nausea. I walked to Fifth, and crossed over to ascend widely spaced white stone steps, traversing a level plane followed by more steps before arriving at the entrance to the Metropolitan Museum. I checked my case, paid the admission and followed the guard’s directions to the rest room at the far end of the hall of ancient sculpture.

Having long suspected the salon artists of being victims of bad press, I had looked forward to the direct comparison with the realists and impressionists afforded by the new nineteenth-century galleries, but with the salonists, my reaction fit a familiar mold: seduced by craft, bored by content. Even the vivacity of the impressionists failed to reached me. I stared at the shadowed ripples and sun-drenched trees of Monet’s La Grenouillere, wondering why it had no more shimmer and glow than a good reproduction. Both factions were outclassed by the anatomical power of Carpeaux’ sculpture depicting a son of Ugolino offering himself as sustenance to his finger-gnawing father. Its grand vision of inward hell made colored patches of the surrounding works.

Outside, hoping for a fast trip back to the hotel, I saw a bus pausing at a stop. Through its door I read the fare-box sign: CORRECT CHANGE ONLY - NO PAPER MONEY. In my mind’s eye I saw my last quarter: in the little wooden dish on the museum checkroom counter. I began to walk, studying the elegant apartment buildings opposite, seeing no likely source for change. As I passed a group of musicians playing the theme from Masterpiece Theater, I dropped my bus-fare dollar into a violin case displaying a hand-lettered placard: SUPPORT CLASSICAL MUSIC, but I didn’t stop, feeling slightly disloyal for liking them less than a black jazz saxophonist I had heard across from Boston’s Lenox Hotel. At Rizzoli’s I was too tired to riffle though the Maestri Del Colore folios, but I found a good book on Beccafumi.

That morning, my suit had put a vague self into sharper focus. Now it hung heavily, my shirt collar a damp rope. Luring me like a mirage was a lunch counter south of Rockefeller Plaza I had twice visited during my last, happier trip; I remembered good food and friendly waitresses. When I finally eased myself onto the counter stool, I ordered a cherry ice cream soda for my main course. I cast worshipful eyes as the waitress carried it toward me in what looked like a large vase. I sat quietly as she placed it before me, the pink froth just inches from my nose. As part of it slid down one side, I skimmed it back up with a long spoon, then began breaking up the submerged spheres. For dessert, I had a large coke loaded with crushed ice, then got a ham sandwich and another coke at the take-out window.

Up in my room, with a series of desperate wrenchings, I stripped away my art-worldconquering armor, showered and changed to lighter clothes, then went down to give Carole another call. Her surprise at my quitting after one gallery changed to understanding as I told of my experiences and my growing wish to get out and go home.

I checked out at 1:00 P.M., then returned to the garage where my car emerged, pastels intact. I didn’t want to drive nine hours in my present state, but my only other choice was to pay a lot of money for another night in a better hotel just to get some sleep.

The steady oncoming rush of pavement gradually muted my alertness and settled my blood: I was on automatic, shivered a bit by bumps in the road, watching a dull movie. I shifted position: first slouching, then abruptly sitting up, but after awhile this lost its effect. I snapped awake twice while facing the rear panels of a tractor-trailer. Through heavy lids, I observed a giant detergent box spilling a trail of white powder. Then it became a truck followed by a sunstruck sheen. In desperation, I slapped my face.

When a sign appeared for a rest area, I turned off, parked and curled up against the door frame for a half-hour nap. This held me for a couple of hours before I had to do it again. Later in the evening, when the sky had turned a deeper gray and tail-lights glowed more crimson through violet air, I picked up a religious talk show. A caller told how she had raised her children without television so they could grow up in a Christian environment. A man from Tennessee had thrown his set out with the garbage, “because you can’t watch that thing for fifteen minutes without a half-naked woman comin’ on the screen.” I could see trashcans across America stuffed with TVs. I got into Pittsburgh at 10:00, feeling chipper enough to take Carole out to the Giant Eagle, where we had a long talk in the parking lot.

The next day, remembering the Guillaumin, I stretched a big canvas to start an oil version of View Through Double Arch.

The following Tuesday, I took my presentation case downtown to show Charles Wiebe, who had handled only my Pittsburgh material. After leafing through a few pages of work I had been saving for New York, he suggested a show in his future location in expanded quarters, to be called the Wiebe & Bonwell Galleries. It ran from December 1982 to the middle of February - and received a good review from Mike May in the Market Square newspaper. When Charles called to tell me about it one afternoon late in December, Carole and I drove downtown to park in Kaufmann’s garage. We walked, skipped and ran to Palmer’s, took about twenty copies from the top of the cigarette machine, sat at the far side of the counter and ordered banana cream pie and coffee. After reading the review all the way through to ourselves, we read the best parts to each other, over and over.

TRIAL RUN by Gregory Smith

Get in touch at gregapple1@gmail.com