two works of richard zane smith in collections of the ...two works of richard zane smith in...

Two Works of Richard Zane Smith in Collections of The University of Iowa Museum of Art

Tomáš Murár

13 September 2013

Introduction

“Life is a blossom, impermanent, and yet in fading, it is seed releasing… into

the winds… where new life and inspiration emerge… again.

Sohahiyoh (named for the Bear Clan), Richard Zane Smith”.1

Intentionally or by chance, in Richard Zane Smith's words cited above can be found the

nature of his art making. As a half descendant of the Native American nation called Wyandotte,

Richard Zane Smith revives an old Southwest heritage of pottery making, which is called

“corrugated ware”.2 However, although Smith is basing his process of working on the ancestry

of prehistoric Anasazi culture, he also states that he is a contemporary artist, and his main goal

is to bring back the old handicraft of his ancestors into the contemporary culture. He wants to

merge these two elements in his extraordinary clay works.

But he still doesn’t understand his works only as a product of contemporary culture, even

though they are inseparable from it, but also as a dedication to God and land, from which he is

taking energy and which provides him a space for his life and work. Similar to ancient Indian

cultures, he dedicates his work back to that from which he took the material and the inspiration.

So as a seed in the winds, from the ancient art making emerges new inspiration and life in his

present-day works. And we are fortunate that in K-12 collection of the University of Iowa

Museum of Art can be found two works of this exceptional contemporary artist.

Richard Zane Smith and His Work of Art

Richard Zane Smith was born in 1955 in Georgia. He was, as he states in his curriculum

vitae, raised in St. Louis, Missouri. In h i s l a te t eens , he became interested in art making,

mainly clay building, while attending the University High School in Missouri. At this age, he

also became interested in his ancestry of American Indian Nation, specifically the Wyandotte

tribe, which he inherited from his mother’s side.

Wyandots, as they are sometimes also called, emerged from several groups. Today’s

ancestors of this tribe state that they are posterity of the Tionontati tribe, and they also have

relation to the Huron Confederacy through the Attignawantan tribe, which was one of the

founding tribes of the Huron Confederacy.

The Wyandotte Nation itself emerged in 1650 by the connecting of several tribes (of the

Tionontati, Attignawantan and Wenrohronon), when they were defeated in the war with the

Iroquis Confederacy. Their original settlement was by Georgian Bay in Canada and their

population in the 17th century was about 20,000 people spread throughout 18 villages. But in

the 1630’s, the Wyandotte were struck by a smallpox epidemic and half of the population died.

Through the 17th century, the Wyandotte were visited by French Jesuits missionaries, and in

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1701, remaining individuals, which by that time numbered around 700, were invited to settle near

Detroit.

During the 18th century, the tribe divided and some of them went back to Canada while

others continued to move towards Ohio, where, in around 1730, most of the remaining

Wyandotts settled. In the 1770s, when the declaration of Independence was signed, the Wyandotte

population was about 3000 and to this day it has never gone over this number. In 1785 and again

in 1789 and several times after they were given the protection of a new US state and made

a reservation around Detroit.

In the 19th century, battles against new settlers occurred and a few of treaties were made,

and also almost the whole community turned to Christianity. In 1839, they sent a delegation to

find a new place for settlement, and in 1842, they had to leave Ohio for Kansas according to

treaty with the new Ohio state. Some of them stayed in Indian Territory in Upper Sandusky.3

In the second half of the 19th century, the Wyandotte established their new life in Kansas;

some of them emigrated between Kansas and Indian Territory in Ohio. In 186,1 Kansas was

admitted as a US state under the Wyandotte Constitution, which caused the separation of pro-

Union Wyandottes (Citizens Party) and “Traditional-Nation” Wyandottes (Indian Party), who

came back to Indian Territory, but then returned back because of the flood of Indian Territory

and because of a danger of starvation.4 During the end of the 19th and beginning of t h e 20th

century the Wyandotte language and customs started to fade away, but they has been preserved

in Peter D. Clarke's book Origins and Traditional History of the Wyandotts, and Sketches of

Other Indian Tribes of North America, which is used even today to conserve Wyandotte culture.

Part of this culture is also Richard Zane Smith, who along with his art work gives lectures

about his Wyandotte ancestry and about their language. He himself now lives in Oklahoma, in one

of the origin Wyandotte settlements. His focus on the original Indian Southwest style of pottery

making also influenced his participation as a teacher in the Sun Valley Navajo Mission School in

Holbrook, Arizona.

This school didn’t have much of a budget for school supplies, so Smith brought his

students to the desert to search for the right clay for art making. This procedure, first used by

necessity has become his routine before he starts every piece of ceramic art. Also the absence

of potter's wheel in the Navajo school caused Smith to look for another type of clay building

process, leading him to the ancient Indian pottery procedure.

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His work rests on searching for high quality clay in the desert land of his ancestors. When

he finds the right quality material, he digs the clay up and transports it to his studio. There he

grinds the clay and sieves it through a screen with water. Then he lets the clay dry and after

some time mixes it with a natural grog as a temper holding the body of the clay firm and

protecting it before cracking. Then he molds thin rolls, which he knits into the shape of a vessel by

coiling them together. This technique requires a lot of time and patience. Then Smith usually

scrapes the surface of his vessels. Up to this point he works according to the old habits of Native

American ceramics.

What could be considered as a contemporary approach is his decorative work on clay

works and his use of the illusionistic perspective to transform the surface of his works. His usage

of decorations is completely modern, although inspired by both ancient American and European

decorative patterns. He combines shapes and colors in a totally new artificial reality and his

decorations could be assumed to be inspired both by ancient work and by the abstract painting

of the 20th century.

He is also inspired by the p l a yfu l perspectives of M.C. Escher (1878-1972),5 who

used artificial reality, impossible to exist in our world, as he played with his audience’s sight and

perception. The same approach is evident in Smith's works. His vessels could seem to be in another

shape from afar, different upon closer inspection, and also have qualities of “moving shapes”,

similar to the paintings of the American art movement “Op Art”.

Smith's works of clay embrace all these aspects, on one side the ancient heritage of

Native Indians and on the other side, simultaneously, influences of modern American painting of

the 20th century are traceable. The third aspect of his art making is dedicating his work to

something bigger than himself.

He is convinced that his art should be dedicated to Nature and God, which give him the

life and strength to work. That is evident in his dedication of long hours in his studio patiently

making small rolls of clay to build high-pitched vessels. In his work, the ancient history of his

ancestors, the modern contemporary culture of his and our lives, and the great commitment to art

work with a higher purpose are connected.

Smith actually doesn’t refer to himself as an “Indian Artist”, but rather as an Indian

descendent with inspiration from ancient Indian art.6 But unquestionably, he can be considered

as one of the most important artists working in clay today.7

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Richard Zane Smith's work in the Collections of University of Iowa Museum of Art

In the possession of The University of Iowa Museum of Art are two works of Richard Zane

Smith. Both of them are vessels made of clay by the technique of knitting thin rolls, which is

described above.

Edge and Flow is of a typical shape with a convex body going into concave neck with a

sprawling edge. What is dominant is the decoration system. This is inspired by ancient

European and American decorative patterns, but it is used together with what is an entirely

contemporary approach. Their use is also important, because in mixing them, a chaos of

decorative patterns is formatted and articulated.

This matter of fact could be interpreted as a typical expression of Smith's art making,

which is discussed in a previous paragraphs; he is combining the ancient attitude towards the

making of the body of t h e art work with the contemporary decoration system (although

inspired by the historical patterns).

This work could be interpreted as a congestion of visual oppression in today's culture,

when a viewer is confronted with the never ending pressure of mass media and the only result of

is chaos and mess. And underneath this illusion the original culture is buried, the heritage

of humanity, but it is fading away from our cognition because of a blanket of disorder and the

tumbling of present-day visual culture.

A Boy and His Snake is an example of Smith's other artistic inspiration and also it is

unique among other works. The body of the vessel is wave-warped with a support of two colored

decoration making the illusion of a movement. This attitude has been taken partly from illusion

drawings and the paintings of M.C. Escher and partly from American Op Art.

In this case is the usage of illusion expanded by making it in the third dimension, which

opens more perceiving options and plays. The achievement of the illusion of a moving vessel

without using modern technologies is unique in contemporary art making and it testifies to the

high artistic quality of Smith's craftsmanship.

What is unique on this work of art among Smith's other works is a motif of a man shooting

an arrow towards to a gigantic serpent, which hugs the neck of the vessel. The serpent is opening

its mouth and showing its poisoning teeth against the warrior with a bow. In the serpent's

chest, one arrow is already stuck, but the serpent is evidently still full of life, and the battle has

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only began. The resemblance of the warrior is evidently aimed towards Native Americans,

testified by his clothing and hair style. From this, we can say that this motif is inspired by

ancient American iconography.

In this iconography the serpent is meant as an expression of evil and death. 8 The

Native American fighting with the serpent could be the symbol of the whole of humanity trying

to fight with death in contemporary culture by forgetting about it and expulsing it from our

minds.9 Snakes, fascinating and at the same time lethal, are a part of the ancient iconography of all

cultures from their beginnings. Throughout many cultures a serpent is interpreted as a Destroyer,

Evil, or Death. In Greek ancient mythology, it was a symbol of sexual vitality or a symbol of

a Health and healing. Most commonly a serpent is seen as an opponent to God in Christianity,

who seduced Adam and Eve to sin.10 In Native American mythology the serpent is mostly known

in the tale of the beginnings of the time, in which the snake is connected with the beginning of the

winter when the giant snake, Sisul, covered the land with darkness.11

Both works by Richard Zane Smith in the collections of the University of Iowa Museum

of Art are unique among the repertoire of art production by Smith. At the same time both of

these works are testimonies to Smith's main qualities – his devoted approach towards art

making, his process of ancient Indian cultures linked with a contemporary attitude, incorporating

knowledge of ancient as well as contemporary culture. We should be grateful that in the

collections of University of Iowa Museum of Art is represented one of the most well-known

contemporary artists working in clay.

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1 http://richardzanesmith.wordpress.com/ 2 McCoy, Ron. “Corrugated Ware”. Southwest Profile (August 1987): 48-51. 3 http://www.wyandotte-nation.org/culture/history/timeline/1534-1842/ 4 http://www.wyandotte-nation.org/culture/history/timeline/1843-67/ 5 http://www.mcescher.com/ 6 http://richardzanesmith.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/am-i-an-indian-artist/ 7 Burnett, Roberta. “Richard Zane Smith”. In: Cohen, M Lee (ed.). Art of Clay. Timeless Pottery of the Southwest.

Santa Fe: Clear Lights Publishers, 1993, 113-119. 8 Jobes, Gertrude. Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore and Symbols. The Scarecrow Press, 1961. 9 Need to note that 20th and 21st century are the first with fear of death, from Ancient Greek the death was welcomed

and taken as an inevitable result of life. 10 Charlesworth, James H. The Good and Evil Serpent. How a Universal Symbol Became Christianized. New

Heaven and London: Yale University Press, 2010. 11 Ibid, 213.

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http://richardzanesmith.wordpress.com/


http://www.wyandotte-nation.org/culture/history/timeline/1534-1842/












http://www.mcescher.com/

http://www.mcescher.com/

http://richardzanesmith.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/am-i-an-indian-artist/










Bibliography

Andrew, Sallie Cotter. “Wyandotte Timeline 1534-1842.” 2004. Wyandotte Nation.

Accessed 4 September 2013.








Andrew, Sallie Cotter. “Wyandotte Timeline 1908-present.” 2004. Wyandotte Nation.


http://www.wyandotte-nation.org/culture/history/timeline/1908-present/

Burnett, Roberta. “Richard Zane Smith”. In: Cohen, M Lee (ed.). Art of Clay. Timeless

Pottery of the Southwest. Santa Fe: Clear Lights Publishers, 1993, 113-119.

Charlesworth, James H. The Good and Evil Serpent. How a Universal Symbol Became

Christianized. New Heaven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.

Jobes, Gertrude. Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore and Symbols. The Scarecrow Press,

1961.

Maurer, Sherry C. The Olson-Brandelle North American Indian Art Collection at

Augustana College. Rock Island: Augustana College, 2010, 254-257.

McCoy, Ron. “Corrugated Ware”. Southwest Profile (August 1987): 48-51.

8

Peterson, Susan. The Craft and Art of Clay. London: Laurence King Publishing, 1999. Smith, Richard Zane. Personal web site. Accessed 4 September 2013.


Vegh, Geza de and Mandi, Alber. The Craft of Ceramics. New York: D. Van Nostrand

Company, 1949.

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Figures

Fig. 1

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Fig. 2

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