STUDIO? I don't really have ''A one." muses sculptor and art professor Tony Smith. "I'm always embarrassed when people want to see where I work." No wonder, because From Modules to Monuments Smith doesn't get involved in the kind r I of physical heroics that make up the By Patricia Molino sculptor myth. "It's more like I sit down at one of those little folding tables, have my breakfast, read the paper, and then play around with some mod- ules." (He uses four-inch cardboard ones.) When he likes what he's got, Smith calls up an industrial welding firm and orders a sculpture, say 16 or 20 feet high. "I don't think of associations when "Master of the Monumentalists" is I'm doing a piece. I just start putting the what Time called him in 1967, just five I ' years after his "black and probably components together.. . malignant" structures began populat- Ing his suburban New Jersey lawn. Smith was an architect and design teacher then (he was just starting at disease." Laughing about that now, he gives his presences (he doesn't think Hunter), and his sculptures were tosses his head back, pushes his white of them as objects) names that fit known to only a few close friends. To- curly hair from his face, and says, 'I their physical personalities. He does day his works are in numerous mu- wrote that as sort of a joke. I never this by free associating. A six-foot seum and private collections and dreamt the gallery people would use black steel cube was called Die be- loom, stretch and generally make their it in the catalogue." Joke or no, Smith cause "die has a lot of associations. presence felt in public places from the still likes his works to exude mystery Six feet has the suggestion of being World's Fair in Osaka to university and a touch of menace. "They some- cooked. Six foot box, Six foot under." campuses and office complexes, most times remind me of Stonehenge . . . (Cont. on page 70) ( recently at the Westinghouse building If the' light is subdued, they have an I in Philadelphia. archaic or prehistoric look I like." Smith Fund Established Amidst all the acclaim, Smith re- "The people on the art faculty were mains mild-rnannered and self-effac- Meanings and Associations very sad that Tony was retiring at the end of the semester. We wanted to do ing. He's unpretentious about his suc- something to honor him," explains cesses and prefers to talk about the It's not hard to see the menace in Prof. Raymond Parker. "So we set up geometry underlying his works or the Smith's sculptures. From one angle a the Tony Smith Fund." The fund, which associations that make them mean- piece like Gracehoper might appear will be used for student scholarships, ingful. "Tetrahedra," "octahedra," friendly enough, but walk a few steps, special lectures and other projects, has already attracted gifts from numerous "space lattice" and an infinity of other and watch out! It seems to be moving persons in the art world. Prof. Smith geometrica pepper his conversation. fast - in your direction. Some of the himself recently contributed the cash Of meaning, he says simply, "Most more compact sculptures, like Amaryl- prize he received from the College Art dreams are visual, people bring asso- lis, give the feeling of tremendous Association - he was named Distin- ciations and meanings to visual latent power, like a gigantic clenched guished Teacher, the second time that national body has ever bestowed such things." fist. an award. But, said Smith, "I never think of "The mark of a great art teacher," Cryptic Creatures these -associations when I'm doing a Prof. Parker notes," IS that his students piece. I establish their own reputations." And just start putting the compo- in Tony Smith's 25 years as a teacher Smith's massive, geometric - but nents together and when it looks like (N.Y.U., Pratt, Cooper Union, Benning- curiously anthropomorphic - works it's almost finished, I figure out how ton and Hunter) he's undoubtedly it's going to stand up." Well, if Smith secured that mark. "One continually have certainly started a lot of people meets mature artists who are grateful guessing. They've been called "pri- doesn't know which end is up until it's done, he surely can't fuss with mean- for having been in his classes," says meval creatures," "cryptic, menacing critic and former department chairman forms," "antique architectural monu- ings and titles. And he doesn't. "I've Eugene Goossen. ments." Smith himself probably fueled never named a piece before it's done. Of teaching, Prof. Smith says, "I some of the conjecturing when he I might not even name it right away." don't do it in any doctrinaire way. It's as though I'm always taking something wrote that he saw them as "seeds or There are a few untitled pieces in in and putting something out." germs that could spread growth or his ouevre, but, by and large, Smith eft: Profes::or Tony Smith :ehoper. "It's from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake," says Smitl B. elow: .. Grac Here's how Joyce described his mythical character," . . . always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity, (he had a partner pair of findlesticks to supplant him). . ." ohofo by Hans Namuth

photo by Batehazer Korab 9 the static values of classical civiliza- tion whereas the gracehoper repre- sents the dynamic ideas associated with Twentieth Century thinking."

The Early Works

Although he was brought up with the "classical values," Smith's very much a modernist. He began painting during his childhood (his earliest ex- tant canvases are somewhat cubist), worked as an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright, set up his own archi- tecture practice in 1940, and soon after, began teaching design as well. All the while, he was painting and making sculptures but, considering then private and experimental, he never showed them in any galleries. By the early 19601s,around the time he began teaching at Hunter, he dropped his architecture practice ("I'd had it with all that building") and focused his energies on sculpture. That's when he first called up Indus- trial Welding, a company whose stock in trade is smokestacks and chemical tanks, and ordered Black Box. That work and some later pieces seem somehow connected to a dense black image from Smith's childhood that hovers in his imagination. Con- fined to bed with tuberculosis for many months, he was quarantined in a little bare cabin whose only promi- nent feature was a black stove. Of that experience he says, "If one spends such a long time in a room with only one object, that object becomes a little god." And it doesn't seem a coinci- Photo by Hans Namulh dence that Smith's Black Box should The artist poses with The Snake is Out in the welding factory where it was made up. Most large Smith pieces have manholes to allow workmen to descend for repairs. be a kind of prototype for the seem- ingly eternal black monolith in Stanley Sometimes friends suggest titles, as ever find. "It's from a verse in Fin- Kubrick's film, 2001. with Willy. "I didn't name Willy for a negan's Wake, 'The Ant and the No matter what the size or shape of long time. To tell you the truth I didn't Gracehoper'." Smith's mein is pen- his works, Smith is extremely sensitive even like to look at it. It seemed so sive as he lifts himself from his chair to how people will experience them. peculiar, so revolting." Smith men- and searches through several shelves "The pieces aren't intended to be tioned this to a friend whose daughter of books for the Joyce tome. It's ap- looked at. They're more related to a was appearing in Beckett's Happy parent he feels a deep affinity for the kinesthetic experience, where a per- Day. "He suggested Willy after the author, a shared sensibility perhaps. son feels himself in their presence." husband in the play who was always And, in fact, he and Joyce have a lot His favorite photos of his works are crawling around making unintelligible in common besides Gracehoper. invariably those taken from under- utterances. It just stuck." Most obviously an Irish, Jesuit up- neath, looking out through the legs. Although Smith says his works are bringing. Smith returns with the book Head-on photographs, he maintains, not "illustrative," Gracehoper looks and a photo of his sculpture. "The make his works look like objects. And, as much like an illustration of James verse is really an argument between there are too many objects around ( Joyce's mythical character as you'll space and time. The ant represents already." w 1I