{"id":45556,"date":"2019-07-01T12:47:56","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T18:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=45556"},"modified":"2023-11-25T15:39:43","modified_gmt":"2023-11-25T21:39:43","slug":"tony-smith-were-all-mad-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/tony-smith-were-all-mad-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Smith: We’re All Mad Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

This profile appeared in the Artists of Utah publication Utah’s 15: The State’s Most Influential Artists (Vol. II).\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Frank Anthony “Tony” Smith in his Salt Lake City studio, 2018, photo by Simon Blundell<\/p><\/div>\n

In 2001, after retiring as a professor of art at the University of Utah, Frank Anthony (Tony) Smith also retired from painting \u2014 and the art market.<\/h4>\n

During his 40-year career as an art teacher at the University of Utah and other universities and workshops, Smith succeeded as a dual-career player in the local and national art markets. He is best known for his innovative, illusionist nod to trompe l\u2019oeil through his groundbreaking use of stenciling, cutting, taping, and airbrushing. \u201cHe\u2019s fooling you, folks,\u201d wrote Susan Mendelsohn in an undated essay. \u201cThese paintings are fancy bags of cheap tricks. They are trap doors and fake bottoms, things up his sleeve and wires and mirrors … It is an invisible experience in the imagination, which shows us how the world looks through Tony Smith\u2019s eyes. Because of his pictures, we can ride piggyback into his encounter with reality. It\u2019s a very\u00a0remarkable ride.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Collectors, gallery goers, and students admire these paintings. Critic Jane Connell called them works in motion. \u201cThey are thought-provoking in countenance and effect, abundant in visual and psychological intrigue,\u201d she wrote in an article for Weber Studies. \u201cSmith\u2019s subjects take an adventurous course, the two-dimensional surfaces imbued with magic, possibility, and surprise.\u201d<\/h4>\n

An example of the complexity and dimensional trickery his acrylic paintings evoke is his 1977 \u201cCasa de las Culebras (<\/i>House of Snakes)<\/i>,\u201d purchased by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and described in the August 20, 1979, issue of Newsweek, as \u201cjam-packed\u201d and \u201csuper-realistic.\u201d Many examples of these illusionistic works are found in Utah art museum collections. Smith\u2019s work is also included in private collections across the country, purchased from a variety of respected galleries, evidence of his talent, skill, and commercial success.<\/h4>\n

Poet Anselm Hollo, in a catalog essay for Smith\u2019s 1988 solo exhibition at Utah Museum of Fine Arts, wrote that his work reveals \u201chumanity as layers of entropic elements, rearranged by the mind\u2019s eye in ways that suggest a grand plan of deconstruction.\u201d In a recent studio discussion, Smith talked about the multi-layering techniques found in much of his paintings and drawings \u2014 \u201cimages atop images, tightly juxtaposed one to another. My illusionistic paintings are like dreams, just dreams. That\u2019s why lawyers have vacation calendars on their walls with pictures of exotic, faraway places \u2014 dreaming about another, get-away life. I hear those paintings are still a big influence with tattoo artists, the best artists today.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Smith\u2019s fierce imagination, quick wit, craftsmanship, and disciplined work ethic haven\u2019t diminished since <\/span>professorial days, but are now evident on his drawing table instead of his easel \u2014 more retread than retire. Instead of brushes, paints, and air compressors, he now prefers simple colored markers. \u201cI rode airbrush painting for quite a while, until I became tired of its mechanics \u2014 all that taping and masking. That\u2019s behind me, and many more drawings are ahead.\u201d Although his drawings could find a commercial market, \u201cnot interested,\u201d he says; and he hasn\u2019t been for almost two decades.<\/h4>\n

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Once Smith became untethered from teaching, painting, and commerce, he plunged into drawing, rechanneling his vitality, spontaneity, and originality. \u201cAs an artist, I felt responsible to be significant, like Bruce Nauman\u2019s spiral neon edict that says, \u2018The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths.\u2019\u201d Smith says he \u201ccarried deep emotions and a responsibility as a painter and professor to do that.\u201d \u201cNow,\u201d he continues, \u201cI don\u2019t have to bail out the art world or throw myself down the stairs all the time like my former student and teaching assistant, the now-famous Paul McCarthy. He thrives on putting himself in difficult situations as a big-time risk taker. I\u2019m a small-time risk taker. Paul throws the carrot way out there and runs after it. I don\u2019t. He commits felonies and I, misdemeanors. He derives satisfaction from creating big installations. I find my juice while drawing.\u201d<\/h4>\n

David Kranes, playwright and literary provocateur, recommended Smith for the 2014 Salt Lake City Mayor\u2019s Visual Arts Awards noting that, \u201cTony\u2019s art was always a great adventure. He would master one approach, then take on the next challenge. Art was a magic trick. Art was beautiful. And, more recently, Art is funny.\u201d Smith\u2019s visual stories morph from confident draftsmanship into droll puns and funny faces and occasional political commentary; some measured in inches, others in yards, some dark gray and off-white, others in muted colors and smudged gradations. His range is from bold, black-marker-filled negative spaces to finely monochrome-hued crosshatched figuration.<\/h4>\n

Smith reads widely, has a phenomenal memory, and is a critical analyst producing a phantasmagoric culch pile for producing irreverent, satirical, and witty works, interlaced with serious social commentary in which nothing is sacred. Paul Larsen, associate professor in the U of U\u2019s film and media arts department and friend, described Smith as seeing \u201cthings from an angle that most of us miss, one revealing something fundamental about the state of things.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Smith\u2019s quick hand is an unhesitant extension of his thinking. His drawings of life\u2019s conundrums reflect <\/span>complexity, humor, and mundaneness. He incorporates life\u2019s<\/span> experiences and the sensibilities of a war correspondent, Army medic, illusionist, grump, humorist, graphic novelist, Star Wars concept illustrator, book author, editorial cartoonist, and more. He\u2019s like Robert \u201cR.\u201d Crumb, bookended by Lenny Bruce on the left and George Carlin on the other left.<\/h4>\n

And what about Tony Smith, the educator \u2014 one of Utah\u2019s great multigenerational influencers, who will be 80 years old in 2019. He\u2019s taught thousands of students over the years, stating he \u201cworked hard and was reasonably responsible\u201d as an educator. If he had a do-over, he says he wouldn\u2019t have criticized his students\u2019 work so severely. A friend, Nick Gosdis, who knew Smith during his professorial tenure says, \u201cYou didn\u2019t know him back then, but he\u2019s a milder Tony Smith today.\u201d<\/h4>\n

A lot of Smith\u2019s changed disposition is due to his home support team \u2014 his wife, Monica, a short-story writer, <\/span>painter, and real-estate tycoon; and his two sons, Evan, a painter and art department chair at Salt Lake City\u2019s West High School; and Willie, who has Down syndrome and is Smith\u2019s constant companion. Perhaps Willie\u2019s good humor is why Smith, a lapsed Catholic, has mellowed. \u201cGetting Willie to the studio, or to the gym, is like walking the 14 Stations of the Cross. Each step along the way is a slow meditation.\u201d Slowing down, gaining patience, and opening one\u2019s heart tends to soften a person.<\/h4>\n

Another of Smith\u2019s former students, Brad Slaugh, painter and owner of Poor Yorick Studios, says he <\/span>\u201cinfluenced generations of young artists, me included,\u00a0who looked to him as a role model of what it means to be a contemporary artist, as well as learning a whole bunch of artistic techniques, concepts and ideas from him.\u201d Slaugh notes that Smith influenced \u201cmany young artists to push beyond their expectations of what was possible for a young creative person in Utah.\u201d He says that a visit to Smith\u2019s studio is \u201cthe most energizing art experience I have in this valley, because he is in there every day doing work that is hilarious, thoughtful and astonishing. There is no stopping him from creating his completely original work, and\u00a0I want all of them. Real bad.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Slaugh is only one student, but his recognition of Smith\u2019s influence echoes many others who are well along in their own lives whether in or out of the art world. Former student and artist Mark Knudsen says Smith\u2019s \u201cclasses were dynamic, articulate, and of the highest creative effort. Tony introduced me to much of the technique that I rely on still. But he did more than that: \u201cTony taught me the intangibles of art and how to see … and taught the importance of visual discrimination.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Smith\u2019s classroom demands to \u201cpush beyond his students\u2019 expectations of what was possible\u201d imprinted them. Their memories of his insistence on observation and to<\/span> \u201cpush the borders\u201d still solicit quips. In a 15 Bytes comment, artist Laura Boardman said Smith was \u201cone great teacher,\u201d but, she opined he could also be a \u201cSmart Ass \u2026 He is a legend at the University of Utah Art Department. I love the art he has left in his trail of destruction, painting, drawing, airbrush and his hand-built home in Torrey.\u201d Tony Smith\u2019s influence on Utah\u2019s artists is as multilayered and complex
\nas his own work.<\/h4>\n

The Menil Collection in Houston recently opened the Menil Drawing Institute, the fifth building on its tree-lined 30-acre campus, a $40 million structure. It is dedicated to the study, conservation, exhibition, acquisition, and storage of drawings, especially modern and contemporary work. This effort demonstrates the importance of drawing today, and from this perspective, Smith isn\u2019t an outlier. Local arts writer Geoff Wichert states that \u201cthe important arts since 1900 focus on drawing, only now coming into full recognition as a stand-alone art. Central to this is the cartoon or comic, which alone among recent arts has created a new visual vocabulary \u2026 in all this, Tony Smith is clearly the new <\/span>Pope (receiving the title vacated by Andre Breton).\u201d<\/h4>\n
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“The Big Tiny” (an early stage)<\/p><\/div>\n


\n\u201cThe Big Tiny\u201d is about the best-known recent example of Smith\u2019s attention to detail, and his tightly woven <\/span>imagery. This 49\u201d x 47\u201d colored drawing was the main feature of his 2016 exhibition at The Gallery at Library Square in Salt Lake City. Creating \u201cThe Big Tiny\u201d started as a personal challenge to fill the gray, wintry days in his Westside Salt Lake studio across the street from Welfare Square. Winter came and went. He eventually filled 2,303 square inches of white paper with imaginings. It was \u201ca drawing that took me almost a year of solid work to finish,\u201d he acknowledged in a 15 Bytes interview with Ann Poore.<\/h4>\n

His devotion to the piece is reminiscent of a Tibetan monk painting an intricate, wrathful deity thangka. To Smith, \u201cThe Big Tiny\u201d became like a revered object. Once completed, he preserved it in what could be described as a Plexiglas reliquary that hangs in his studio. Smith admitted to Poore that it\u2019s \u201clike a sacred papyrus. Which it kind of is to me.\u201d Although a significant piece of work, Smith doesn\u2019t see it as high art or as something that accrues him or those who view it with spiritual merit as do thangkas. \u201cThe Big Tiny\u201d came into existence, he claimed in Claudia Sisemore\u2019s 2016 film about him, because its maker is \u201ca professional fiddler, professional goofer\u201d who also plays golf \u2014 a lot.<\/h4>\n

Smith\u2019s break from painting to drawing was full-blown iconoclastic tinkering. His work bursts from his imagination onto paper like the mythological Athena who sprang fully armed from the forehead of her father, Zeus. Athena could be Smith\u2019s studio consort; she is the goddess of war, wisdom, and art \u2014 Smith\u2019s script in trade. Unlike the Medusa-faced shield and spear-gripped hands of Athena, Smith holds fast to sharpened pencils and packs of markers in his assault on rolls of fine paper while tweaking our perception of depth and volume while fine-tuning the reverb on his studio sound system as Tom Waits sings (growls), \u201cWe\u2019re all mad here.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Smith at work in his studio, June, 2019, photo by Simon Blundell<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2001, after retiring as a professor of art at the University of Utah, Frank Anthony (Tony) Smith also retired from painting \u2014 and the art market.<\/p>\n

During his 40-year career as an art teacher at the University of Utah and other universities and workshops, Smith succeeded as a dual-career player in the local and national art markets. He is best known for his innovative, illusionist nod to trompe l\u2019oeil through his groundbreaking use of stenciling, cutting, taping, and airbrushing. \u201cHe\u2019s fooling you, folks,\u201d wrote Susan Mendelsohn in an undated essay. \u201cThese paintings are fancy bags of cheap tricks. They are trap doors and fake bottoms, things up his sleeve and wires and mirrors … It is an invisible experience in the imagination, which shows us how the world looks through Tony Smith\u2019s eyes. Because of his pictures, we can ride piggyback into his encounter with reality. It\u2019s a very\u00a0remarkable ride.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1628,"featured_media":45600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[2616,752],"class_list":["post-45556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-frank-anthony-smith","tag-tony-smith"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Tony_Smith-3.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 10:51:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1628"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45556"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45641,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45556\/revisions\/45641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}