Sketchbook Project 2011

Just Below The Surface, The Cover, originally uploaded by Brad Ford Smith.

This is the front cover of the sketchbook I sent to The Sketchbook Project 2011. SBP 2011 is an exhibit of moleskine sketchbooks sent to the Arthouse Co-op at the Brooklyn Art Library. The project includes 28835 artists in 94 countries. Starting this summer, SBP 2011 will tour 8 different cities. Stopping at the Austin Museum of Art in March.

To see more images from my sketchbook check out my Flickr site.

For more info on the project check out the Arthouse Co-op blog.

OGOP goes onto Flickr Site

OGOP Hatchie Moe, originally uploaded by Brad Ford Smith.

Downloading images of my printmaking project OGOP onto my Flicker site. These prints were made using 60 grit sand paper as the print block.

The Nature Of Sketchbooks

My use of sketchbooks began with a journal in high school. Journaling was a way to sort out and examine all the unexplainable actions and reactions that occur while coexisting in a building filled with hormone driven teenagers. Over the years my artwork and my journals have merged, resulting in sketchbooks filled with images that are maps through a world that still seems to be driven by questionable actions and reactions.

For a long time I used my sketchbooks as a kind of petridish, place to compose my thoughts and images, and then transfer that information to an outside medium such as painting or sculpture. Two things occur by doing this, first there is a shift from the reactionary thought process to the mechanical mind, a change from what do I think about this, to how do I reproduce this. Secondly, processing the imagery remove some of the personal baggage associated with that imagery. This makes the artwork more comfortable to display in public

The sketchbooks have a symbiotic relationship. I work in multiple sketchbooks at the same time. Some of them I have been reexamining and reworking for years. Others seem to fill up over night. All of them feed from each other to expose new possible relationships and directions.

There is a rawness inside the sketchbooks that is related to the subconscious grittiness of reactionary thought. Because of the imperfections and flaws associated with this rawness, the sketchbooks have always been held back from public viewing, but I have come to realize that this rawness also conveys an honesty and truth that is after all the foundation to all great art. 

Up Against the Pecha Kucha Clock

Several people have asked if I could post my Pecha Kucha Dallas presentation on line. So here it is, 20 slides, 20 seconds each. Pull out your stop watch and see if you can beat the PKN clock...

Tonight I'm taking you on a rambling journey of Flashbacks, Visual Connections, and Unintentional Concoctions.

Welcome to my slightly dyslexic world of Art-O-Vision.

When these Hummels came into the conservation studio, I was trying to quite smoking for the fifth time. They were coated in 30 years worth of second hand tar and nicotine. 

Sometimes when you make a tough decision, the world backs you up.

This pre-Columbian artifact was broken in half. Inside are fingerprints so clear that the FBI could use them for identification. 

This isn't a cold ceremonial artifact, it's a direct link to a once living person.

This is my childhood home. 

They say you can never go home again. 

Well, a few years ago I moved back into this house. So I can tell you from personal experience that it's much more surreal the second time around.

Every time I dig in the yard, I dig up toy guns, G. I. Joes, army men, and the tools that I borrowed from my Dad. 

Yeah, I'm just now returning them to the tool shed. Sorry it took so long Dad.

When I dug up this small ceramic turtle, suddenly it was the summer of 1966. I was 4 years old, sitting in the gravel driveway with the turtle in my mouth, squashing ants with a stick.

This is one of my Dad's paintings. It was in "deep storage" for over 40 years. 

When I pulled it out, I could see it hanging in our living room. I was just a tot, and I remember thinking it looked like fried eggs in outer space.

This is some of my work. A small work on paper, a lacquer panel, and a page of doodles, the kind you make while your listening to someone talk.

These were all done before I rediscovered Fried Eggs in Outer Space.

These abstract drawings were done for a show at Gray Matters. At the time, I was a senior art conservator, spending my days restoring gilded frames, chair legs, and drawer pulls.

In this project I photographed lots of buds and seeds. The photos were used as building blocks to generate the abstract shapes on top. So, those shapes would not exist without the information contained with in the photos below...

A few months later, I came across this almost direct photographic translation of one of the abstract shapes.

I spent a week at the Untitled ArtSpace in Oklahoma City producing a series of block prints that were totally non-representational.

It was all about creating PURE abstract shapes...

Yeah, apparently while I was up there in Oklahoma, I was channeling the creative spirit of the ceiling fan down here in my bedroom.

So much for purity.

Art Basel Miami! Developing Art-O-Vision. 

5 days of nonstop art viewing. 

On the first day, Damn I saw a lot of art! By the end of the fifth day, you have gone beyond burnout. Everything looks like art. 

I highly recommend it.

Vermont Studio Center, where each month a new batch of 50 neurotic, self absorbed artists and writers are let loose on the small northern town of Johnson Vermont.

I drew, painted, sculpted, photographed, shot videos, blogged, and talked Art Art Art 24/7.

It was very unnatural...

...Unlike making art in my studio at home.

All the distractions are actually part of the creative process. They allow ideas time to gel and ferment. 

SculptCAD Rapid Artists. I was 1 of 14 artists that spent 3 months learning how to create sculptures on a computer... 

The top row are the actual sculptures I created using the program. They're plastic resin sprayed with black velvet, so they are soft to the touch.

But I really like how the photos below have squashed the sculptures back into a 2D space.

This being my newest work, I really don't know what the epiphanies are yet. But with my niece graduating high school and my nephew graduating college, I assume they are about liver spots.

Thank You

Well, there you go. To much info, to little time, but a lot of fun to do.

All of the Pecha Kucha Dallas events have been held at small venues, Sons of Hermann being the biggest so far. The 150 seats at the last PKN Dallas, held at the Dallas Center for Architecture was sold out in just under 2 days. The small size of the audience makes each event feel like you are sharing something special with a bunch of friends. Of corse the small sized also means that a bunch of your friends have and will miss out on the event.

Color Correct Photographic Reproductions

After 4 failed attempts at photographing the drawings in the Book Page Collection, and getting sad color reproduction, I finally found a friend that has one of those top of the line Epson scanners. With in an hour I had all the drawings scanned in beautiful living color. They are now posted on my Flickr page.

Our Printmaking Workshop is just around the corner

Well the Holiday Card Printmaking Workshop is this Sunday. Susan and I have collected all the supplies. We are going to make a couple of prints this week just so we'll be on the same page with the instructions and any possible printing issues.

Artist Made Holiday Cards

Halloween has pasted and even though Thanksgiving is still a few weeks away I feel it is safe to say that I have already designed and test printed this years holiday card. Don't get me wrong, Thanksgiving is my most favorite holiday, but making Christmas cards is a Smith tradition that goes back 56 years. And this year Susan Giller and I will be teaching a workshop at the Creative Arts Center on hand made holiday cards using a quick and simple block printing method. For more info you can go to the CAC web site.

Posted on http://bradfsmith.blogspot.com

Designs for this years Holiday Card

The Smith family has a tradition of making holiday cards which was started by my parents while attending OU way back in 1946. Over the last 56 years at least one person in the Smith family has maintained this tradition. Last year, I regrettable did not make a card, but this year I am going to make up for it by teaching a workshop with my friend and fellow artist Susan Giller at the Creative Arts Center. The workshop will focus on a quick and easy block printing method. I'll blog more about it later. Above is a sketch of this years card.

After Sketching: Evening #4: Draw, Drew, Drawn

For the last night of Sketching in the Galleries at the DMA the group was kind of small so we drew from artwork in the All the World's a Stage exhibit, focusing on a selection of small works on paper, most of which are not put up for displayed very often.

We discussed local galleries like Public Trust, Dunn and Brown, Mighty Fine Arts and art magazines such as Art On Paper, Juxtapoz, Hi Fructose that focus on drawings and works on paper. Also places that offer figure drawing sessions and other museums that have drawing from the collection programs such as the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Sundays @ 11:30). The Nasher and the Crow Collection say they have drawing programs but those are never reliably listed, so no body know when to attend. The Meadows and the Irving Art Center are rumored to have programs, but I see nothing listed.

We also talked about next weeks program, the first Thursday Night Multi Media program held in the Center for Creative Connections. There was a lot of interest in this program, although nobody had any hard info on what was happening there next week. So I looked it up this morning.

The artist hosting the month of October will be Mitch Rogers, who among other creative things, has been fabricating body parts, bloody nubs and meaty bits for TV and movies for about 20 years. I assume he will be giving instructions on mold making, life casting and spurting buckets of blood. Just in time for Halloween! It sounds like it will be a lot of fun.