Interviews: Colin C. Smith

Colin C. Smith,  Goozlum, 2010, resin and pigment on aluminum, image size: 23 x 23 in., credit: © Colin C. Smith, courtesy of the artist

Colin C. Smith is an artist active in Omaha, Nebraska. Born in Ord, Nebraska and raised in Grand Island, Nebraska, Smith had parents who were skilled craftspeople. He received his BFA from the University of Nebraska Omaha in 1988, and then earned his MFA from Drake University in 1992. His works are an interdisciplinary aggregate of various 20^th century movements and techniques with an emphasis on visual pleasure.

Smith and I had a conversation at his studio near the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Jonathan Orozco: When did you first realize you were interested in art?

Colin C. Smith: Second semester during freshman year at Creighton I was assigned a work study position with who ended up becoming my first mentor: Father Lee Lubbers. Brilliant Jesuit. Studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and was just really brilliant.

I said, “what do you want me to do?” He said, “paint the bathroom,” and he gave me a gallon of purple paint. I finished it, and I said, “what do you want me to do next?” He goes, “paint it again.” He was a Dada artist. I ended up becoming his assistant for a few years.

Colin C. Smith,  The Oxymoronic Tulip Funk Myth, 2003, urethane/pigment on aluminum, image size: 48 x 80 in., credit: © Colin C. Smith, courtesy of the artist

JO: Do you remember when you started making art?

CS: The next semester I signed up for [Lubbers’s] class for beginning sculpture and started making stuff.

JO: What did you study in college?

CS: Political Science.

JO: How did that happen?

CS: I was interested in politics, I thought maybe I could be an attorney or something, and that did not interest me. I was into Bob Dylan big time, and Joan Baez, and people with Woody, people with political messages. Lee introduced me to Beat Poetry. I started reading that stuff.

JO: How long was it before you changed your major?

CS: I probably changed my major a few times before that, like creative writing, but then it became visual. I worked at a place called the Omaha Magic Theatre. It was a really political place too. These people were an offshoot of the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, disciples of Joseph Papp, the theater director and writer. Avant-garde. Living Theatre would maybe just do a pop-up performance.

About that time, I was doing political art myself, like no nukes. I never got arrested, but I used to go protest in Offutt [Air Force Base].

Colin C. Smith,  Cauldron X - Electric Blue, 2008, paint on cast aluminum, sculpture size: 10 x 12 in., credit: © Colin C. Smith, courtesy of the artist

JO: I forgot to ask, which universities did you attend for your bachelor’s and master’s?

CS: So I started out at Creighton. I dropped out. Was working at Magic Theatre doing construction; painting houses. And then went back part-time with Lee. I was his lab assistant. Then transferred to UNO.

I had to present my work and myself in front of faculty to get accepted into the program in UNO. The sculptor there was Sydney "Buzz" Buchanan at the time. Do you know his work? The big, giant Mark di Suvero-type sculptures on campus. I was doing all this political art, like "no nukes," and anti-Reaganism, and anti-military-industrial complex stuff. Central American politics, protesting that.

Buzz said “I’m not taking him. I don’t want him.”

Gary Day says, “Buzz! They’re doing this stuff in New York!”

He goes, “I don’t care. I don’t want him.”

Peter Hill jumped up and said, “I’ll take him! I want him!”

So that’s when I started painting.

I went to Drake and did that for two and a half years.

Colin C. Smith,  Summerteeth Foxtrot Aftermath, 2003, urethane/pigment on aluminum, image size: 23 x 60 in., credit: © Colin C. Smith, courtesy of the artist

JO: What did you do after Drake?

CS: Buying and selling design, and did that until that started to decline. I taught a couple workshops here and there. There was an educational wing of the Bemis called Cultural Arts Together, CAT. I taught there for as long as they existed. Taught a monotype class, life drawing, so I did that for a while. More, and more, I got into the design stuff, traveling nationally, and then I started teaching again about six or seven years ago.

JO: Did you ever live in New York?

CS: Did I? No.

JO: But you visited there frequently?

CS: I did. Yeah.

JO: Can you tell me about that?

CS: It was way different then. This was around 1990-ish. That’s when SoHo was still the center of things. We would just walk around, and like, “Oh, Tony Shafrazi is having an opening. Let's go into it.” And Julian Schnabel would be in one corner, and Sandro Chia would be in one corner, and Kenny Scharf would be in one corner. We were just there hanging, you know, you could just join in. SoHo was a blast back then.

I knew people from the design business that had a big huge gallery on Spring Street. On Houston and Bowery, that would be Northeast SoHo, there would be all these furniture stores that just have all their stuff on the sidewalk and I’d go around buy stuff, run down to Prince Street and sell it to Pete and Bobby [laughs] and they would send their van. I’d make money and just pay for my whole trip and not have to do anything, just like, “go pick up that table on Houston Street.”

I just had a blast running around.

Colin C. Smith, Echo, 2012, resin and pigment on aluminum, image size: 48 x 96 in., credit: © Colin C. Smith, courtesy of the artist

JO: Who are your artistic influences? Are there any movements that influence you?

CS: It changes all the time… Probably the biggest one, just from being in New York all that time, was, they began in the late 70s when painting was supposed to be dead; abstract painters of the late 70s and early 80s. Most particular David Reed.

Jonathan Lasker was part of this group. Tom Nozkowski, who taught at Rutgers, just died. Shirley Kaneda, Peter Halley, Stephen Ellis. A lot of these people ended up doing better in Europe, because, I don’t know. Seems like Europeans were more receptive to this kind of abstraction than “flavor of the month” stuff that kept changing. Mary Heilmann, who I had the privilege to be in an exhibition with once.

Anyway, it wasn’t flavor of the month. It was people still making paintings when painting was supposed to be dead.

[Smith and Orozco proceed to tour studio]

Colin C. Smith, Omega T3, 2012, resin and pigment on vinyl toys, sculpture size: 17 x 17 x 5 in., credit: © Colin C. Smith, courtesy of the artist

I think these sculptures hearken back to my political days. There are these sculptures that are mocking artificial food, particularly our neighbors, Conagra. This was inspired by walking through the Conagra campus one time and seeing they were hauling in real food for their employees to eat while they’re developing fake food [laughs]. I thought that was hilarious. These are like semaphores. or fake examples of fake food, like industrial tests for banana-flavored yogurt, or something [laughs].

Actually, that yellow one was in a show at the Sheldon.

JO: When?

CS: A few years ago. Did you ever see “Its Surreal Thing.” Here’s the catalog for that Sheldon show. There’s major artists in this. Major Surrealists. Martin Puryear. Nancy and Charlie were in it. Here, just read the checklist.

JO: [Pause] Oh yeah, you weren’t kidding. I saw Bourgeois’s name. Duchamp. You were in a show with Duchamp! Noguchi. Oldenburg. Oppenheim. I’m just listing them. This is crazy.

CS: [Laughs] Yeah.

JO: Anything else you want me to know?

CS: You know me.

JO: And that’s it.

Colin C. Smith, credit: © Colin C. Smith, courtesy of the artist

Colin C. Smith currently lives in Omaha, Nebraska.

His website is: https://www.ccsmithstudio.com