Carl Smith's art beautifully bridges the realm between Pop Art and Surrealism. An American artist, he has called Berlin, Germany his home since 2001. Smith's artistic practice is a skillful blend of silkscreen printing, collage, and painting techniques. His artistic journey began in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and he further honed his skills at The Cooper Union in New York.
His creative process involves merging personal photographic materials with drawings and other narrative fragments. Prior to actualizing a finished image, he works through several layout combinations. Smith meticulously selects and transfers specific pieces onto canvas via screen-printing, and then, elevates these pieces with oil paint to complete his works. He masterfully employs found images to convey slightly absurd and humorous visual anecdotes. In Smith's own words, the process of creating these narrative works constitutes "drawing with pictures."
“In the present time period we are living in, books have reached a transitional point due to their digitization, whereby the content of the book and the physical book are becoming separate. In effect this means that their identity is now rapidly changing. I find it fascinating that historically certain books have formed civilizations, caused great upheavals, been the source of massive scandals, and started entire wars even though they are in themselves just completely inert objects.
“I am especially intrigued by the appearance of books when they are together in large, disorderly groups where all their different colors and styles somehow find a certain harmony. In many of my pieces I have sought to draw attention to this dynamic and experiment with the visual possibilities of stacking and leaning the books on each other like some kind of abstracted building block. In short, as a visual artist who works primarily with collage, I find books to be endlessly inspiring. They are so ordinary, yet they can be so sublime.”
