Sculpture and works on paper by African American artist George Smith will be shown in conjunction with the 30th anniversary celebration of University at Buffalo's Department of African American Studies. Smith is a significant contemporary American artist with a rich exhibition, commission, and award history. He is a professor of art at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Among his accomplishments is the impressive steel sculpture, Journey to Sirius (1992) on public view in Dallas. Smith's work references the Dogon aesthetic and, to use his words, "the expressive power of African geometry." His steel sculpture and oil on paper works evoke a powerful, spiritual quality that speaks of the contemporary experience while acknowledging a symbolic vocabulary of the past.

George Smith is a former resident of this area, who created a sculpture for the Utica Station of the Buffalo Metro Rail system in 1985. James Pappas, an artist and Professor at University at Buffalo, is contributing an essay to the exhibition catalog. Curator Nancy Weekly, working with the artist, is selecting the exhibition.

  George Smith, a nationally known artist, works in materials such as metal, wood, and paper. He is not restricted by medium, only by the strength of his visual sensitivity to express where his personal inclination and vigor will lead him. Smith is known as a sculptor but this only hints at the definition of his work. Smith started out as a painter, but was told that his painterly vision was "muddy," a term used by faculty art professors to descend on the use of black as a color. Ironically George's pieces are grounded in earth tones that draw from the colors of the earth. An interest in African art led him to the current collection of pieces in this exhibition. While he uses this reference point to fashion his mythological icons, George suggests that he has gone beyond this definition to move elsewhere in his quest for self identity. The materials used lend themselves to an investment in the historical age of bronze casting, and African inspired contribution to the iron works industry in America at the dawn of its birth.

Working in steel is not by accident; Smith's early influence came from the experience of the Buffalo Steel Industry, where his father worked in a local mill. Later, the work of Richard Hunt, and Tony Smith juxtaposed against this backdrop prompted the desire to create monumental works of art. It is no doubt that the cerebral context of steel and fire all coming from the earth, lingers as a source of strength and endurance which George explores.

George's work has an opaque aspect to it. It is grounded in the very essence of the material. The tactile touch of energy imbues the static yet moving qualities in his objects. The arrangement of openings invites the viewer to peer through and around these cavities of space which form the geometric contours of this work. His scrubbed surface textures offer a reward to the viewer who searches closely. There is an "excitement about the actual process itself." George uses an oil bar with a torch for a sensual effect. The cracking sounds of the welded sections, and the sparks are music of another sort. His building up of layers of material is efficiently fused to give a fullness to his pieces. This is true of his drawings as well. He again pushes the surface of the tempered paper. The rubbing and scumbling techniques appear to raise the surface in undulating ways. The method is what is intriguing. The tactile surface reveals a forceful entanglement with the medium. His attempts to regulate the seemingly appositional effects of wax against paper go unresolved. Yet the tension that is set up by this confrontation is what's important. His investment with this approach is refreshing. He improvises on his themes by composing as part of the act of creation.

Smith's interest in creative music inspires and ignites his creative expression. There are man visual artists who make direct connections with African American music, Romare Beardon, an outstanding example uses the juxtaposition of imagery pieced together in a concert of color and shape. Mondrian, Stuart Davis, and Alan Davies were inspired by the improvisational attributes of Jazz as a creative metaphor for their vibrant expressionism.

George Smith's work goes beyond the completed process of his statements. It is the excitement and energy of the creative act that moves him. In many ways he is grounded in the performance, something that is less comprehensible to the novice viewer. Like a Jazz musician in the act of spontaneous creation, George plays with light and dark passages using dissonance as counterpoint to the free standing vertical forms that his expressionism seemingly embodies. These are introspective works of art. Not just free standing or mounted vehicles of expression. The labor and thought process work together.

A consequential trip to Mali, West Africa formed a cultural reawakening for George Smith. The influence of Dogon culture on his work is important but it is not a final resting place for his ideas. He extracts from these images a mythic and spiritual vision grounded in an ancestral space. The architectonic imagery of Mali village buildings with their horizontal spires, and extending from the upper reaches of their baked structures expel an eerie cosmological appearance. When confronted by them their uniqueness requires further observation. The visual statement is intrusive. Like the Gods that send their messages in the form of spirited objects the Dogon sensibility is dramatic, ritualized and fundamental to the health and well being of the people. The African artist is a transmitter of communal values. The artist is non individualistic. Style and content are derived from tradition handed down among a select few. These artists hold power particularly in the forging arts. The secrets are inherent with spiritual authority. It is the metals, woods, brass, bronze and ivory that takes on significant meanings. They are used sparingly for special purposes. This constitutes the rarity of explanation. In the work of George Smith it is the transformation of the idealized forms into the grounded aesthetic of the contemporary. He opens to the public the gift of history, his present vision and the prospects for the future.

Like other artists working in such themes in the African genre, (Ed Love, Doyle Forman, Mel Edwards, and Barbara Chase Riboud) looking back to the past is inspirational. But Smith's works may be preservationists. George sites the beauty of the physical world in the shaping of his images, but draws equally from the spirit aspects of the culture he invades. Predictably the artist must move on seeking avenues of exploration that are unique to his or her inner soul. The formal shaping of his work is a visual statement of his interest in the geometric. These large objects summon us to go beyond the artifact into a world George has envisioned for himself. There is indeed a lyricism that is playfully engaging.

America's African American tradition in music is derived from the West African poly rhythms rich in varied textures. The trading of human cargo beginning in the sixteenth century brought a mixture of peoples from the kingdoms of Western and Central Africa. The Middle Passage as it was called brought with it a transplant ion of new aesthetic principles. Once here the African found ways to survive by encoding and preserving their customs, mores, languages, arts, and religions despite the assaults on their very existence. In holding true to their belief systems they were able to pass on from one generation to the next the secrets of their rich heritage that persists even today.

The African American experience is solidly rooted in the American experience. The Arts were the fundamental way in which an expression of a rich history could bring continuity to their existence. Inherent in this art is the spiritual healing force that makes the western world the most dynamic and the most probable place for human change. The untrained and biased eye of western critics called this aesthetic too "primitive" as in "Primitive art." The western observer's inexperience posed a new set of issues as to how to develop a hypothesis for this new encounter. It posited a break in the continuity of art critiques. Picasso, Kandinsky, Moore, and Lipchitz understood the inherent qualities that existed in both object and sound. They expropriated in an attempt to find an inner soul within themselves. This manifests itself in the desire to be complete, to be whole. Out of this wholeness comes universality which extinguishes difference. The individual must come to grips with the past in order to understand the present. These encounters with other cultures are enriching not only to the artist but to society as a whole Rendering it as myth. The "rain Gods" are extensions of a belief system from which the Heavens come to be the interpreted truth. The "act of creating is never the same very time" - Art Blakey.

George Smith's tectonic structures form a special language. Titles are only a public vehicle. He would rather dispense with title definition. These are limitations that are too fragile and circumspect. The contextualizing of his works is only vehicles for recognition. His work is inspired by "Sankofa" a West African word meaning to return to the past and to move forward to the future. His titles, "Nommo," "Kindred Spirits," "Dissent from the Spirit," are centrifical illusions born out of a yearning for an understanding of the past. Like an anchor, this body of work appears to hold firm to its roots unabated by the pressures of the contemporary.

George Smith studied at the San Francisco Art Institute where he received his B.F.A. in 1969. In 1972 he extended his education at Hunter College in New York City where he earned his MA degree. Returning to Buffalo in that same year, George accepted an appointment in the Art Department at the University of Buffalo where he taught sculpture. In 1980 Smith moved to Houston, continuing his career at Rice University, where he is currently teaching. George Smith has had numerous exhibitions, public commissions, and visiting appointments at various colleges in the United States. His large scale public commissions can be seen in major cities including Buffalo, at the Utica metro transit station. This vertical arc like form is a classic example of his earlier work from his travel to Africa. Standing as a dominant symbol of protection over the daily traveler, this piece entitled "Lebe" (meaning water serpent) is a stainless steel structure coated with a black veneer. It also invokes a power from the Gods.

The exhibition at Burchfield-Penney Art Center is an ideal opportunity to break from convention. George Smith is in a transition stage that bends and expands his direction in an attempt to redefine his work in a shifting and subverting way, Smith is searching for the spirits of a "New World," a concept drawn from a Jazz album by trumpeter Lee Morgan. Like the spirits of the Dogon people, they are there but you cannot see them; they are from afar and yet so near.   It is Smith's memory that we are attempting to render. The search for a spatial rhythm that is non linear; a tone poem and a praise song. The past must relinquish to the future but never be extinct. This is the theme that Smith Poses to the viewer as his work explores the possibilities of time and space.

The problem with any discussion of African Art is its changing resilience from the old world aesthetic to the contemporary appropriations from the modern world. The icons of the past are being replaced with the secular and the specific. At a time when there is more travel to Africa than ever before, the contextualizing from the artifact to the emergence of the individual, places new aesthetic criteria to be examined and rediscovered. One can see multicultural influences from the west and the east as pressures of agricultural reform and urbanization take a firm root in the lives of its people. In the 14^th century it was Islam, and the missionaries spreading Christianity, today it is the entrepreneurial initiative that drives a new Africa into the 21^st century.