Richard Zane
Smith
Wyandot
All Glory
11" H
x 13" D
Richard Zane Smith (Wyandot)
works in the ancient Southwestern Anasazi style referred to by
archaeologists as "corrugated ware." This delicate
and time-consuming method involves hand rolled coils of native
clay, shingle lapped, slip painted with multiple shades of color
and either electric kiln or wood fired in an adobe kiln.
Unlike others in this popular
Native American pottery market, Smith doesn't come from "generations
of potters like so many out here are. I don't fit into the Indian
artists stereotype," he says. "But at the same time,
I am strongly rooted in the Wyandot people."
"My art education began
as a child at home in Missouri. In the evenings all five of us
kids would gather round listening and drawing quietly while Dad
or Mom would read wonderful books to us."
"Clay excited me from
high school and all through my art school years though I enjoyed
working with all kinds of natural materials, from leather to
stone to wood. During these years, investigating my own native
roots became something of an obsession with me."
"In 1978, I worked as
an art instructor at a Navajo mission school in Arizona. It was
there that I was first exposed to native clays, Anasazi pot sherds,
and the woman who was to become my wife and soulmate."
"Our first year together
we lived on the road, worked orchards, and as a ranchhand in
Idaho. There we lived out of an old haywagon that I fixed into
a little shack. Winter came and we headed south and camped out
for four months south of the Superstition Mountains where I made
small burnished pots to sell for grocery and gas money."
"When it began to get
too hot to work, even under the Palo Verde trees, we headed northward
where Carol was hired as a teacher on the Navajo Reservation.
We spent eight blessed years in Ganado,where we started a family
and I began to seriously pursue my art work."
"My wife, Carol, patiently
taught for six of those years until my work began to be noticed.
We have now lived in Glorieta, New Mexico with our son Isaac
and daughter Rachel for over 13 years. Having a rich yet mixed-blooded
heritage has been difficult for me at times to sort things out
and it still provides it’s challenges. But I am actively
involved with other Wendat/Wyandots who are restoring traditions
and reviving our language."
"I have a dream to help
restore to our people the pottery traditions of our ancestors
as has happened amoung the Pueblo peoples in the southwest. I
am convinced that creativity is a gift. It is a sacred responsibility;
a seed to plant and nurture. I give all honor and thanks to Sondaichichia,
our Creator!
Richard Zane Smith draws on
inspiration from spirituality and the humility shown by the Navajo
which translates into breathtaking pottery unlike anything most
people have ever seen before.
Many collectors believe, upon
first glance of Smith’s work, that they are looking at a
finely woven basket given the intricate design created with Smith’s
unconventional contours and contemporary color and design.
Smith uses perspective, color,
and space to trick the eye into assuming three-dimensional space
on a two-dimensional plane, creating a visual delicacy few artists
achieve and equally few collectors have the privilege of calling
their own.
