Universal appeal: artist Cedric Smith is cooking up demand for positive images of African Americans in art

Art Business News, Jan, 2004 by Jenny Sherman

In the Atlanta home of artist Cedric Smith, photos are scattered everywhere. Piled on the sofa cushions, overflowing tabletops and stuffed into closets are more than 700, mostly vintage, photographs. Some are gifts from friends, others he finds by frequenting flea markets. He buys a number from a collector in New York, though most he discovers at an Atlanta antiques fair held once a month.

They're not archived, and they don't get flamed and hung. Smith uses the images as raw materials for his own artwork: a mixed-media technique combining aged photographs with acrylic paint and pieces of Fabric. It's a distinctive style developed by this artist with almost no outside influences and no formal art education. In fact, although Smith had always painted for fun, he never knew until recently that he could consider art as a profession. "Artists make money when they're dead, is what you hear," said the 33-year-old. "You never think you can make a career out of it."

It was while working one afternoon at the barbershop where he was employed that he found out otherwise. Seated in his barber chair was one of Smith's customers, a man named William Tolliver. "I was cutting his hair and I overhead him on his phone talking to someone about meeting him at his studio," said Smith. "I asked him about it and he said he was a painter. I couldn't envision what he was talking about, so he took me to his gallery."

The visit to Tolliver's gallery opened Smith's eyes. There he saw how a self-taught black artist was making a living with his work and had his own gallery to boot. Smith's wheels began turning. When he went back to his easel, he had a new drive to see if he, too, could turn art into a career. Now all he needed was a focus.

He found that focus one day while listening to some music by Public Enemy, a rap group with a strong political bent. One of the phrases--"Most of our heroes don't appear on no stamps"--caught his imagination. "That sparked it," said Smith. He started painting images of African Americans as they would appear on postage stamps. "Then it moved from postage stamps to magazine covers," he said. "Instead of Time magazine, it was Our Time. Not People, but Our People." He finally settled on portraying positive images of African Americans in old-fashioned advertisements, such as those found on signs that would hang outside a general store, billboards and even the labels on food products.

As he honed his artistic vision, Smith also clarified his style. He started incorporating objects into his paintings for symbolic significance. Pieces of fabric are tributes to his grandmother, a devout churchgoer who quilted, as are the little churches he draws on the backs of all his paintings as part of his signature. The ribbon of colors coming together in the center of each piece is a symbol of the gift of giving back. Using the round opening of one of his paint jars, Smith presses circles into his paintings to mimic the bubbles seen in old films.

But the most significant objects in Smith's paintings are the photographs, especially those of black children, that he bases his scenes on. "I'm using children more because I base a lot off mg childhood memories," he said. "The challenge is figuring out how to use each photo."

Inspiration, however, is never hard to find. Smith gets ideas from signs and ads, by strolling down the aisle in the grocery store and by browsing the pages of the Williams Sonoma catalog. Cooking is another passion of his, and one that also acts as his muse. "The most recent painting I did was of basil," he said. "I was cooking and adding this sweet basil. I just kept glancing at the label [on the basil package] and thinking about this photo I had of a little girl with a basket in her hand."

As Smith developed his style, he also made his first attempts at marketing his work by hanging some of his paintings in the barber shop where he worked. "I started getting a response from people," he said, "More, 'Oooh, that's nice. I didn't know you were an artist.' Not too many people came to buy. If they did, I told them the price, and that kind of discouraged them.

"As blacks, we're still not as educated about art as far as investment," he continued. "It's still just decorative [to many people]." Smith admits that he didn't know much about the value and pricing of different types of art, so he started collecting art to learn about it.

While looking for pieces in the Archer Lock Gallery (now the Barbara Archer Gallery) of Atlanta several years ago, Smith was approached by the gallery owner, who asked if he was an artist. When Smith said yes, he was invited to bring some of his work to show the owner. That led to Smith's first gallery show, where most of the 10 paintings he brought sold.

Soon, other galleries started asking to show his work. Smith is now represented by 10 galleries, is included in three Georgia museums and public collections and has been successful enough to paint full time for the past three years. He has produced one limited-edition print that sold out, with plans to do at least two more. Six of his images have been released as posters by publisher Image Conscious of San Francisco.