User:Chaquille/Richard Zane Smith

Richard Zane Smith (born 1955) is a Wyandot sculptor who grew up in St. Louis Missouri and learned the art of pottery at the Kansas City Art institute. Smith's works draw from his ancient Wyandotte heritage as well as Pueblo inspired designs that incorporate coils and layers within the clay. Smith utilizes the influences of many Southwestern pottery styles, including the Navajo and the Ancient Puebloans.

Introduction to Art
Richard Zane Smith was born in 1955 and is of the Wyandot peoples of Oklahoma. He was born in Georgia and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. Smith specialized in ceramics when he attended the Kansas City Art institute.

Smith was introduced to art at a young age. He and his four siblings would gather around and listen to many stories told by their parents throughout their childhood. Smith found an interest in clay during his high school years. In addition to clay, Smith would work with many natural materials, such as wood, leather, and stone. However, the main media for his art was clay. During these same years, Smith also formed an obsession with his Wyandot roots.

Cultural Inspiration
In 1978, Smith traveled to Arizona where he worked as an art instructor at a Navajo mission school. This was his first contact with native clays and Ancient Puebloan (or anasazi) potsherds and fragments. He incorporated such ideas into his works and bore a new style of pottery. Smith's pottery is reminiscent of pre-historic corrugated pottery (pottery where the coils made to form the shape of the pot are left exposed and are rough textured) from the southwest as well as resembling the ancient basket-works of the Wyandot people. Smith fuses contemporary designs with natural materials that he was fond of in his youth. The pottery style is unique to Smith, but is also a representation of his roots in Anasazi pottery as well as his Wyandot heritage.

Language
Richard Zane Smith has also advocated for the rebirth of the Wyandot language. Having gone officially extinct in the 1930s, the Wyandot language is one of many native languages that the people cease to speak. Many Wyandot people have joined the nearby Seneca because the belief that they preserve their traditions more carefully. Since the last Wyandot boarding school close in the 1970s, many of the people who were once taught to abandon their native tongues have been returning to it. In 2005, Smith wanted to revitalize the Wyandot language and began teaching the language to some 200 Wyandote people who live in northeastern Oklahoma.

“Op-Art” Geometric Design Jar (2000)
With this optical illusion inspired piece, Smith incorporated the 1960s "Op-Art" style with his traditional corrugated pottery. The lines are etched in such a way that the squares contrast with the round body of the pot, and clay strips of color highlight the three-dimensional aspect of the geometric shapes.

Corrugated Bowl with Wood/Rock Handle (2005)
This corrugated bowl incorporates the traditional clay medium that Smith is known for along with other natural materials such as the wooden handle and the rock placed in the middle of the handle. This piece is representative of Smith's Wyandot basket-like influence and his early love of natural materials.

Garden Set of 6 Pieces (2001)
This small collection of pieces are a prime example of Smith's corrugated pottery designs. The small coils are stacked on each other and smoothed out on the inside of the pot, but left exposed on the external body of the pot to show the influence of the Ancient Puebloan potsherds.

Bury my Heart at Auschwitz (1995)
The incredible pot by Smith shows the outlines of multiple figures around the exterior of the pot, representing the victims of Auschwitz. This piece was given as an anonymous gift in memory of Eunice and Charles Frank to the Philbrook Museum of Art in 1995.

=== Bear Baiting an Indian (2017) === For the Last Drop Project, Smith created this traditional ceramic sculpture in the likeness of the Bear Baiting jug dating back from Staffordshire Enlgand in the 1730s/1760s. It depicts English colonizers holding out a stein of alcohol to an unsuspecting Indian. Behind the jug they hold chains and crosses prepared for the "baiting" and subjugation of the Indian. This sculpture, for Smith, represents the struggle that the Wyandot peoples have had with alcoholism since the post-contact period, and the manipulation of the Indigenous people by the English colonizers through alcohol.

Exhibitions

 * Native American Art, Philbrook Museum of Art
 * The American Craft Museum International Tour
 * The American Craft Museum
 * Denver Art Museum
 * "Breaking the Surface", Heard Museum
 * San Diego Museum of Man

Collections

 * Philbrook Museum of Art
 * The American Craft Museum
 * Denver Art Museum
 * "The Last Drop: Intoxicating Pottery, Past and Present"

Honors and Awards

 * "Best of Pottery Award", Heard Museum's Annual American Art juried Competition
 * 2010 "Community Spirit Award", First Peoples Fund