Harold Smith Art - March 2020 Press Kit

Harold Smith Artist Press Kit Spring 2020

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Statement My current work, the Man of Color Series, is a reflection on the social, emotional, psychological, spiritual, economic, and physical complexities of being a black male in present day America.

My past works have explored this same theme through the prism of jazz, blues, visual metaphor and symbolism.

Most of my work consists of acrylic on canvas. I also work with oil, paper, assemblage, and collage.

I am currently self-representing.

Harold Smith March 2020 (913) 214-6029 haroldsmithart@gmail.com

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Biography 1962

Born in Kansas City, MO

1981

Graduated from Wyandotte High School (Kansas City, KS)

1983

Graduated with an A.A. in Data Processing (Kansas City Kansas Community College)

1985

Graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science (Union College)

1986

Moved to Alabama to be a programmer/analyst and teacher

1989

Moved to Bermuda to teach

1993

Returned to the United States

1996

Graduates with a M.A.T. from Webster University

1999

First exhibition at Kansas City Kansas Public Library

2000

Launched website (Geocities)

2001

First gallery exhibition (Corridor Art Space)

2007

First exhibition outside of Kansas City (Montanaro Gallery in Rhode Island)

2011

First museum exhibition (American Jazz Museum)

2011

First Abstractumentary produced (Natasha - Portrait of an Urban Poet)

2013

Participates in first traveling exhibition (Convergence - Jazz and Visual Arts)

2014

First international exhibition (Cognac Blues Passions (Cognac, France))

2015

Second international exhibition at (Le Moulin du logis, Angouleme,France)

2018

Second Abstractumenary produced (The Gospel According to Glenn North)

2019

First college museum exhibition (Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art)

2020

Exhibited at the Stocksdale Gallery (William Jewell College)

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Selected Exhibitions 2020

Untitled, (Collect Level) Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, Kansas City (Group)

2020

Untitled, Charlotte Street Foundation Gallery, Kansas City (Group)

2020

"True Colors", Carter Art Center, Kansas City (Group)

2020

El-Scari Harvey Art Gallery, Center for Spiritual Living, Kansas City (Individual)

2020

"The Black Gaze", Stockdale Gallery, William Jewell College, Kansas City (Individual)

2019

"Can You See Me?", Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (Individual)

2019

"Purpose" , Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, Kansas City (Individual)

2018

"Cultural Legacy: What's Going On" , Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, Kansas City (Group)

2018

Louisiana Tricentennial Exhibition, Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans (Group)

2017/18

Black Space/Black Art, Traveling Exhibit, Kansas City (Group)

2017

"Reflections of Monk III, Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba, New York(Group)

2016

"Bear Witness", Johnson County Public Library, Shawnee Mission(Group)

2016

"Reflecting The Times, Box Gallery, Kansas City (Group)

2016 2015

"INSPIRED: 20 Years of African American Art" , Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans(Group) "Vernissage de Portraits de Harold Smith ", Le Moulin du logis, Angouleme, France

2014

"Colors of Life", Cognac Blues Passions, Cognac, France

2013 2012

"Convergence : Jazz and the Visual Arts", University of Maryland, David Driskell Center (Traveling Group Exhibition) "Reflections of Monk", Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba, New York(Group)

2011

"Colors of Jazz", American Jazz Museum, Kansas City

2009

"Untitled", Faso Gallery, Kansas City(Group)

2008

"Future Primitive Jazz", Montanaro Gallery, Rhode Island (Group)

2007

"Plantation Lullabies", Nobis Gallery, Newark (Group)

2006

“Tribal Masks And Jazzstracts”, Montanaro Gallery, Rhode Island (Individual)

2001

Untitled, Corridor Art Space, Kansas City, Mo

2001

Untitled, Kansas City, KS Public Library

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Periodicals:          

Harold D. Smith, Jr.: Can You See Me?, Elisabeth Kirsch, www.kcstudio.com, September 2019 Harold Smith: Art As a Platform for Activism, Alice Thorson, KC Studio (online), May 2017 Artist Pages: The Art of Black Hair Braiding, July 2019, KC Studio Last Glance: Harold Smith, May 2015, KC Studio Le blues aux couleurs de la vie, Francoise Digel, Angouleme Sudquest, June 2014 JazzColors Magazine, 2013 Music, Life, History Meld in Art, Alice Thorson, Kansas City Star, April 2011 Jazzin Up Art, Marilyn Bellemore, Newport This Week, April 2006 Interview with Harold Smith, VERGE (online), Meana Kasi, July 2001 Intimate Images Explore Racism, Injustice, Kansas City Star, Caprice Stapley, June 2001

Books:  

McGarvey, E. & Weiss, J. (2013). 2pac v. Biggie : an illustrated history of rap's greatest battle. Minneapolis, MN: Voyageur Press.

Koppelman, S. & Franks, A. (2008). Collecting and the Internet : essays on the pursuit of old passions through new technologies. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co.

Writings:            

American Jazz Museum’s New Executive Director Will Lead Push to Prominence, March 2020, KC Studio Arts News: Rare Daguerreotype Gives Insight into Issues of Race, January 2020, KC Studio The Arts in Kansas City Have a Friend in Mayor Quinton Lucas, November 2019 Artist Pages: 25 Kemper Watchers Pick 25 Favorites, September 2019, KC Studio, (Contributing Writer) Artist Pages: The Art of Black Hair Braiding, July 2019, KC Studio Glyneisha Johnson: Bo͝ozəm, Haw Contemporary Crossroads, June 2019, Honors: Sheri Purpose Hall, May 2019, KC Studio Bold and Confrontational Display Reflects the Collective Consciousness of the Black Experience, April 2019, KC Studio An Interview with Jade Powers, November 2018, KC Studio Championing Kansas City’s Black Arts Scene, April 2018, KC Studio Artist Pages: Black Art in Kansas City, April 2018, KC Studio An Ode to True Black Manhood, March 2018, KC Studio

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Abstractumentaries:   

Natasha � Portrait of an Urban Poet, 2011, screened at Westport Coffeehouse, Maysles Cinema (NYC) The Gospel According to Glenn North, 2017, screened at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Penn Valley Community College A Time To Sew: The Art of Sonie Ruffin, (in production)

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This Kansas City Artist Paints To Make Black Men More Visible

By Laura Spencer • Aug 30, 2019

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Artist Harold Smith stands next to a painting in his Kansas City, Kansas, home.

Laura Spencer / KCUR 89.3 "I don't like sanitized spaces," says artist Harold Smith, whose house in Kansas City, Kansas, doubles as his studio.

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It's about a mile from where he grew up.

"I like diversity," Smith says. "So just regular working class people."

Recently, Smith's paintings have gone from his home studio to the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, where they're now on view in an intimate glass-enclosed space called the Kansas Focus Gallery.

A series called "Man of Color" provides close-up views of faces in bright strokes of color.

Harold Smith's 'Untitled (Man of Color series),' 2019, inside the Kansas Focus Gallery at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. Credit Laura R Spencer / KCUR 89.3 After doing missionary work in the South and in the Caribbean, Smith returned to Kansas City in the 1990s to help take care of his father, who had Alzheimer's disease. He'd always painted, but with more time at home, he started to experiment with different styles.

"Trying to imitate what other artists did," Smith remembers. "Like most rappers, they learn by learning somebody else's song and then adding your own nuances until they find their own flow.

I think it's the same way for visual art. For me, it is."

He learned he was "not an exact perfect placement guy," that he wasn't about drawing outlines and shadings.

"I realized I'm more of an expressionist," Smith says. "At this point, (I'm) just using the palette knife mostly instead of the brush."

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Smith trained as a computer programmer and taught game design at the Manual Career and Technical Center. This year, after more than three decades of teaching, he's teaching art for the first time at Lincoln Middle School.

"So I think it's good that I've been creating," he says. "I can bring something to the classroom."

Stacks of canvases line a spare room in Harold Smith's Kansas City, Kansas, home.

Credit Laura Spencer / KCUR 89.3 A new series represents what Smith calls a "progression or a second chapter."

For the paintings in "Black on Black," he uses black paint and a palette knife to create textured, almost hidden, portraits.

"The 'Black on Black' pieces are about the invisibility of men of color in the community," Smith says. "Even, you know, letting blackness define itself instead of expecting black men to be defined by white standards."

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Harold D. Smith, Jr. 'The Five, Can you see us now?,' 2019 Credit Laura Spencer / KCUR 89.3 The wall labels for the Nerman show were written by Kansas City poet Glenn North, programming director at the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center. The two first collaborated in a 2011 exhibition at the American Jazz Museum, "Colors of Jazz," which paired Smith's art with North's poetry.

"About 10, 11 years ago, I discovered this style of poetry, or sub-genre of poetry, called ekphrastic poetry," North says, "which is simply poetry that's written in response to a visual image, most often visual art."

He describes the labels for Smith show as "little vignettes" that respond to the painter's work, informed by lengthy conversations they've had about the artist's philosophy and world view.

Here, poet Glenn North reads 'A Portrait Speaks,' where he imagines what one of Harold Smith's portraits would say if it had the opportunity.

"I wanted it to be very clear to the visitors that I was not speaking from a scholarly perspective, as an art historian or as a curator, but just as a person who loves his art, and these are things that I glean from it," North says. "And I felt that perhaps in some way that would give visitors that are seeing the paintings another way to kind of interact with the work."

He adds, "But definitely in deference to Harold and his vision."

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And that vision is to make black men more visible. The paintings and poems at the Nerman are a start.

"Harold Smith, Jr.: Can You See Me?" runs through October 27 at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art on the Johnson County Community College campus, 12345 College Boulevard, Overland Park, Kansas, 913-469-8500. Artists Jarvis Boyland, Cara Romero, and Harold D. Smith, Jr. talk about their work at an exhibition reception and lecture, 6-8 p.m.

Thursday, October 24.

Laura Spencer is an arts reporter at KCUR 89.3. You can reach her on Twitter at @lauraspencer.

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“Harold D. Smith, Jr.: Can You See Me?,” Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art

by Elisabeth Kirsch September 13, 2019 There are only seven paintings in Harold Smith’s exhibit “Can You See Me?” but each is so vibrant, mighty, and disturbing that the show feels as expansive as a major museum installation.

Smith labors in the trickiest of arenas: he juggles painting, protest and poetry in every artwork.

The result? Each piece turns into a heat-seeking missile that hits the mark it aims for: the mind, eye and heart of the viewer.

Smith is an artist, teacher and writer whose frequent subject is racism. (He is a regular contributor to KC Studio.) One of Smith’s paintings is installed in the atrium, just outside the galleries featuring the current group show “Foresight/Insight: Reflecting on the Museum’s Collection.”

That piece, “The Five, Can You See Me Now?” is an all-black painting, but its blackness is neither a void nor is it empty. There are traces of five different men’s faces scattered on the surface, a specific reference to the Central Park Five, teenage men — four African-Americans and one Hispanic — falsely accused of a horrific assault and rape in New York’s Central Park in 1989. They were later found innocent, after serving time.

One of the five, Dr. Jusef Salaam, is quoted on the painting’s label. Also included is a poem by Glenn North — he was named the first poet laureate of the 18th and Vine Historic District in 2016 and frequently collaborates with Smith and other artists. North writes: “Can’t you see/America still struggles/in her original sin/a system rooted in slavery/with no attempt to amend. . . “ The six paintings in the Nerman’s Kansas Focus Gallery also deal with racism, and each has a commentary by North. All the works are single images of African-American men that can be read as self-portraits of the artist, as well as generic images of men like him.

“Visible Man #2” is another black-on-black portrait, this one of a single face. “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me,” Ralph Ellison wrote in his classic book “The Invisible Man.” Smith’s portrait underscores this point, as the viewer is required, with effort, to discern the image embedded in the canvas. It “embodies how difficult it is for some people to truly see Black men,” North writes. The result is truly mesmerizing, as the painting’s burnished, craggy, reflective surface glows like hot embers, embodying both majesty and rage.

The remaining five works are from Smith’s “Untitled (Men of Color series).” Four paintings consist of the neck, shoulders, hands and face of an African-American man, painted in bold strokes of color. Three are surrounded by a solid field of turquoise (it’s hard to think of any artist other that Wayne Thiebaud who has used this hue to such effect), and another by red. The intensity of the backgrounds propels each image forward.

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If there are hands depicted in Smith’s art, they always serve a purpose. In one “Men of Color,” the figure covers his mouth with his hand. In the accompanying label, titled “Not Being Seen or Heard,” North writes: “We create art, make music, excel in athletics and inspire fashion trends that the world adores, but we are not given fair treatment in those very same industries . . . we cover our own mouths in quiet resignation.”

One painting, composed of a series of colorful slashes on a sienna background, is simply a face that is crying. North writes powerfully of this, in “The Portrait Speaks”: “. . .I am the Black man who was kidnapped from Africa. I am the Black man who provided the free labor that made this country an economic superpower. I am the Black man who was emasculated, forced to watch while my women were raped and my children were sold. I am the Black man who was lynched, made to endure decades of racial terror . . . The colors that comprise me don’t blend because I was never offered the opportunity to blend into the country I helped build. When, in the history of America, has my life mattered? Look into my eyes. Is it any wonder that I weep white tears?”

In all of Smith’s works, he portrays eyes in such a striking, direct manner that one thing is made clear: we may not see him, or other Black men, but not for one minute do we doubt that the artist and his brethren are past and present witnesses to all the racial injustice that has transpired over the centuries. Smith’s art, and North’s words, make one hope that there is a reckoning at hand.

“Harold D. Smith, Jr.: Can You See Me?” continues at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College, 12345 College Blvd., Overland Park, through Oct. 27. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Friday, Saturday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday; noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free. For more information, 913.469.3000 or www.nermanmuseum.org.

About The Author: Elisabeth Kirsch Elisabeth Kirsch is an art historian, curator and writer who has curated over 100 exhibitions of contemporary art, American Indian art and photography, locally and across the country. She writes frequently for national and local arts publications.

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Harold Smith: Art As a Platform for Activism

by Alice Thorson May 1, 2017 The KC painter, filmmaker, editor and writer celebrates the contributions of black culture and pushes against racism.

If a person wants to know what happened, read a history book. If they want to know how it affected people, look at the artwork. This adds to the importance of black art throughout history.

It is like hieroglyphics. —Harold Smith On a warm evening in late February, the premiere screening of “The Gospel According to Glenn North” played to a packed meeting room at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Many in the audience had come to honor North, the nationally renowned inaugural poet laureate of the 18th & Vine Historic Jazz District, but they left the event with a new appreciation for the talents of the documentary’s creator, artist Harold Smith.

To date, Smith is best known as a painter — of dynamic expressionist canvases fired by his love of jazz and jazz artists. “When I connect with jazz, I feel a sense of freedom,” he has said.

Smith credits jazz with keeping the spirit of African Americans alive during decades of segregation and racism.

In 2011 Smith rocked the American Jazz Museum with his exhibit “Colors of Jazz,” featuring six dozen of his vibrant canvases, several of them threaded with political commentary in the form of news clippings collaged amid the bright slashes of paint. The exhibit included poems by North that expanded on the ideas in the artworks.

The North documentary is Smith’s fifth film; he is also a poet, the founder and editor of the online journal “UrbanKore” (launched in March 2015) and an advocate for black artists like the poet Natasha Ria El-Scari, whom he profiled in a 2011 documentary.

He is also a lifelong activist, an avid student of black history and an astute commentator, who regularly airs his views of art and life on his Facebook page and in his articles for “UrbanKore.”

Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin, artist and visiting curator for the American Jazz Museum Changing Gallery, has featured Smith’s work in numerous shows.

“I find his activist art empowering,” Ruffin wrote in a recent email. “It allows individuals to engage in the depth of the story he is telling through the imagery he uses in his artwork. For all who view it, his work is important to the dimension of culture as a catalyst for change.”

Smith is part of a recently formed African American Artists Collective that Thompson-Ruffin is working to develop, and he does not mince words about the need for this kind of empowering professional association.

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“I think KC has a flourishing but fairly unknown black arts movement,” Smith related in a recent email. “I see where a lot of black artists go to NYC and seem to find it easier to integrate. And I wonder if that is because NYC was one of the earliest places to abolish slavery and, while still having racist elements to its culture, was not as open and vicious as in the South and Bible belt … where we are today.

“I find his activist art empowering. For all who view it, his work is important to the dimension of culture as a catalyst for change.”

—Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin, artist and visiting curator, American Jazz Museum Changing Gallery No-Holds-Barred Commentary Smith, a native of Kansas City, Kan., holds a Master of Arts in Teaching from Webster University, and teaches game design at the Manual Career and Technical Center in Kansas City, Mo. He earned his undergraduate degree in computer science and worked for years as a computer programmer, skills evident in his numerous online publications, from “UrbanKore” to catalogs of his work.

Smith still calls Kansas City, Kan., home. “I thrive on living in the urban core,” he said. “At night, I hear arguing, gunshots, and police sirens. Pit bulls and Rottweilers can be seen roaming the streets. The area where I live is considered high crime and low income. However, living in the urban core feeds my art. It fills my veins with life that bleeds onto the canvas.”

Smith’s career as an artist spans two decades and multiple exhibitions. His colorful expressionist vocabulary reflects his self-study of artists including Henri Matisse, Emil Nolde and Joan Mitchell; the content stems from his desire to celebrate the contributions of black culture and push back against racism.

Smith’s determination to confront what he calls an American life “fragmented with problems” made news in 2001, when his exhibit “Red, White, and Black” at the Kansas City, Kansas Public Library drew complaints for its inclusion of a charred American flag in an artwork titled “Black America.”

Since 2006, he has continually added canvases of close-cropped faces rendered in slashing strokes of brilliant color to his “The Man of Color Series,” which he describes as “my personal exploration of the complex, chaotic, and multilayered experience of men of color in America.”

The black male experience is a frequent touchstone of Smith’s work. In the Oct. 21, 2016 posting of “UrbanKore,” he ruminated on the “regular” black men who populated his neighborhood growing up:

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“My dad worked on cars. The man next door drove a petroleum truck. Across the street was a man who worked at the railroad …All men. All black. All hardworking. Nearly every child I grew up with attended college as a result of their hard work.

“I think the media sometimes creates polarizing imagery of black men,” he added. “Either you are an Obama or you are a thug. In my opinion, regular, hard-working, simple, black men are an ignored group. They are the new “invisible man.”

In 2009, Smith painted “Modern Mandingo,” the first in a series of canvases he titled “Manhood Interrupted.”

“I created it (just) after the election of President Obama and in the midst of the rise of the Tea Party,” Smith explained. “The new Mandingo is the well-educated and economically successful black male that strikes fear into the heart of whites who mistakenly believed the ‘Old Boy System’ would forever provide them with well-paying jobs, financial security, and good retirement plans. Instead of fearing that the ‘well-hung’ black man would take their wives and daughters, the fear was that the well-educated and investment-savvy black man would take their pensions and position of economic superiority.”

In January 2016 Smith expanded on these issues in a four-minute film, “Manhood Interrupted,” interspersing relevant clips and quotes with images from the eponymous painting series.

A quieter, but no less incisive take on the black male emerges from his 2013 film “Holt’s Barbershop.” Filmed in KCK, the six-and-a-half-minute film is a little masterwork of social history, examining the role of the black barbershop as an essential forum and community space, “a gentlemen’s club,” where black men feel safe. As in his other films, Smith includes quotes from scholars and experts to help frame the ideas.

Economic inequality is a recurrent theme of Smith’s paintings and his films. Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, in 2011 and 2012 he painted a series of canvases collectively titled “The oKKKupy Series: Because Wall Street is the new KKK.” The paintings feature graphic, uncompromising close-ups of woeful faces limned in broad, black brushstrokes, with dollar bills of various denominations stuffed in their mouths, crowning their heads or forming a fist that grasps them around the throat.

He recently revisited the theme, writing on his Facebook page, “We were drugged into a false illusion of progress based on Wall Street numbers that did not translate into true economic equality for people outside the 1%.”

In 2014, Smith was invited to have an exhibition in conjunction with Cognac Blues Passions, an annual blues festival in Cognac, France. Filled with paintings of blues musicians, Smith’s “Colors of Life” exhibit at Martell House drew coverage in print and television. Seven months

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later he returned to France for a second one-person show, “Portraits: Harold Smith,” at Le Moulin du logis art gallery in nearby Angoulême.

Kindred Spirits Erin Dziedzic, director of curatorial affairs at the Kemper Museum, sees a common thread running through Smith’s paintings of musicians and his documentary on Glenn North.

“Harold Smith’s appreciation for the passion, message and timeliness of music and poetry is palpable,” Dziedzic wrote in a recent email. “(It is) felt deeply, both in the color, energy and ephemera he includes in his portraits of jazz musicians, and in the compositional elegance of his recent documentary work illuminating the life and words of Kansas City-based poet Glenn North.”

While its subject is North, the documentary reveals the two artists to be of like mind on many issues.

Like North’s poems, Smith’s films strike an exquisite balance between moments of raw emotion and passages of keen analysis. Well-timed interjections of humor provide an escape valve for intense considerations of serious issues including police violence, racial slurs and stereotypes.

The opening moments include footage of President Barack Obama’s 2008 victory speech in Chicago and clips of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America” sermon, providing emotional flashpoints for the world North addresses in his poems.

Early in the film is a segment featuring footage of recent police violence against black men. The soundtrack includes a wail that goes on for six minutes, followed by North’s reading of “How to Mourn a Brown Boy,” a chilling poem offering advice to bereaved mothers-to-be: “Save onetenth of all your earnings/to cover the reward money./Stock up on candles and flowers/and teddy bears to adorn the shrine/where you will find the body/outlined in chalk …”

Rueful humor is another point of convergence between North and Smith. When North was invited by the Kansas City Museum to choose and research a piece from their collection, he somewhat reluctantly settled on a painting of KC champion cakewalker, Doctor William Henry Joseph Cutter Brown. The caricatural depiction was “the only thing I found that had any connection to African American culture,” North said.

In Smith’s film, vintage footage of people dancing the cakewalk accompanies North’s descriptions of his findings that it was a subversive dance intended to satirize white social pretentiousness.

North goes deep on the subject of black dance in his poem “Why Black Folks Like to Dance,” which he recites in the film. Correlating the beauty of black movement with African Americans’

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particular history of struggle, he explains to those who don’t share that struggle: “Your body couldn’t move like mine ’cause it never needed to.”

Smith and North keep the poetry — and information — coming, as the film veers between moments of pride and pain, anger and hope.

These same emotions fire Smith’s life’s work — his paintings, films, poems and commentary — and will likely continue to do so. The current state of U.S. affairs offers plenty of fodder for artists of conscience.

This fall, a work by Smith will be featured in the exhibit “Reflections of Monk: Inspired Images of Music & Moods III” at the Wilmer Jennings Gallery’s Kenkeleba House in New York City. For more about Smith, visit www.haroldsmithart.com About The Author: Alice Thorson Alice Thorson is the editor of KC Studio. She has written about the visual arts for numerous publications locally and nationally.

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“Look Me In The Eye: Portraits of Kansas City,” Epsten Gallery

by Dana Self October 15, 2019 Jam-packed may fairly describe the installation at the small Epsten Gallery. Without much room for the art to breathe, the gallery goer’s experience can feel chaotic and the strength of the individual work may get lost, so, take your time because there is typically a lot to love about Kansas City artists. Curated by art critic Elisabeth Kirsch and artist Mike Lyon, the exhibit includes self-portraits, abstracted portraits, images of people in various guises, in and out of dress, and more, by a diverse roster of talents.

“Portrait of Memory,” Ryan Wilks’ delicate watercolor and collage on paper, comprises two nude male figures that stand and kneel before a sexualized abstract figure. Wilks, a self-taught artist who also does performance art, focuses his work on gender, sexual identity and “the various realities of queer existence.” His drawing and painting style is delicate yet assured and the piece has a compelling dreamlike quality.

Kansas City lawyer Jim Lawrence’s oil paint on canvas, “Witness,” is a straight-on portrait in shades of caramel brown. Because the background is white and the subject presented starkly against this void, there is a sense of isolation and internal struggle. Lips tightly pressed together, the subject seems reluctant to project any inner thoughts. It is a portrait that counter-intuitively reveals nothing of the subject’s interior life.

“They Killed Cornbread,” by Harold Smith, delivers intensity in color, gestures, brushstrokes and the subject’s gaze. Smith’s work is also on view in the exhibition Can You See Me at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art through October 27. His gestural, abstract painting style energizes his subjects — Black men — who, he has noted, have become invisible. His portraits often comprise of large, gestural paint strokes against a brilliantly hued background. Here our position is slightly lower than the open-eyed stare of the man in this painting. A figure with an exaggerated derriere accompanies the subject, floating as a solid, dark profile in the background, facing the central figure. The silhouette is a reference to the “Hottentot Venus,” a South African woman exhibited as a freak show attraction in the 19th century due to her large buttocks. Both images emerge from a lime-green ground. The title of the painting is a line from the 1975 film “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” about the police killing of a Black high school basketball star.

Roger Shimomura’s small acrylic on canvas “Muslims and More #2” returns to a familiar theme in his work; that of a detention camp, specifically for Shimomura, the detention camps that imprisoned Japanese-American citizens during WWII. Here the subject’s face is pressed up against the picture plane and two strands of barbed wire cross her face. The painting reminds us that the forced imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during WWII is not ancient history and in this current political climate, we may well wonder, who is next.

Hyeyoung Shin’s “Still,” from her series “Lingers,” is a print-based image on Jiho-gibeop, Korean paper casting, using chrysanthemum prints and antique frames. Here the frame is fragmented 48

and broken, perhaps suggesting the artist’s own grief. By transferring her printed image into sculptural form, the artist makes her memories more tangible. The self-portrait here is similar to ones in her installation work “Unapologetic,” a searing visual representation of her grief after her father’s death.

Since it’s impossible to discuss all of the artists in this exhibition in the space allowed, let’s at least list them all by last name: Achucarro, Allman, Angilan, Barber, Bennett, Bussell, Chaivaranon, Corbin, Crabtree, Cromwell Lacy, Delgado, Delgado, Farstad, Fisher, Florez, Fresia, Gagliardi, Gardner-Roe, Garton, Gomersall, Hartman, Haugen, Henk, Hoke, Honig, Humphrey, Hutton, Jinkins, Jurkiewicz, Keeling, Krahenbuhl, Kube, LaGrand, Lawrence, Leitch, Li, Liao, Lindaberry, Lynne, Lyon, Marstall, McCaffrey, McGuire, Niewald, Nolker, Parks, Pearce, Pollen, Powell, Richardson, Sajovic, Sal, Schroeder, Shimomura, Shin, Sierra, Smith, Snodgrass, Sotomayor, Stark, Thompson-Ruffin, Tombaugh, Toombs, Walter, Wilks.

Look Me In The Eye: Portraits of Kansas City continues at the Epsten Gallery, 5500 W, 123rd St., Leawood, through Nov. 29. Hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday – Friday; 1 to 4 p.m.

Sunday. Open by appointment, Monday and Saturday. For more information, 913.266.8414 or www.epstengallery.org.

About The Author: Dana Self Dana Self Dana Self is an arts writer who was a contemporary art curator for more than 13 years in Kansas, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Tennessee museums, including the Kemper Museum. She has organized about 100 exhibitions of emerging and mid career artists. She is currently marketing director for UMKC’s Conservatory of Music and Dance.

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Music, Life, History Meld in Art, Kansas City Star April 2011

By Alice Thorson

(MCT) April 17--"I really don't think I have a philosophy of art or painting; I just like to paint," veteran Kansas City artist Harold Smith says.

His words may be modest, but Smith is a dynamo in the studio, judging from the vibrant, paintladen canvases, 72 of them, in his exhibit "Colors of Jazz" at the American Jazz Museum.

Inspired in part by an uncle who was a jazz musician, Smith has loved jazz since he was a kid.

Through his paintings, he gets inside the music, translating the sounds and his sense of fellowship with jazz musicians into slashing strokes of brilliant color made with a brush, a palette knife and sometimes with his fingers.

"I think it's all about expression -- a desire to get it out of my soul and connect," the artist says.

His exhibit connects on multiple levels, integrating music, imagery and words.

Videos of jazz musicians performing and the artist in his studio appear on a DVD player at the show's entrance. Poems by the museum's poet-in-residence, Glenn North, are printed on the gallery walls beside the paintings.

The combination gives the show a very African feeling; from the standpoint of European art history it could also be described as a Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art.

"There is as much of (Henri) Matisse here as Africa," observes the museum's jazz film fellow, Zachary Hoskins, in text posted on the wall. Smith, like Matisse, is a colorist to be sure, but he's also an expressionist, using paint to convey feeling and emotion.

"I tend to identify with Emil Nolde and some of the Bay Area figuratives," Smith said in a recent email. "James Weeks and Joan Brown are two that stand out."

North's poems, captivating for their clarity and emotional honesty, help organize Smith's vast body of work, which spans the past eight years and several shifts in palette and method.

Most of his canvases portray single musicians. The horn player of "Bow Tie," composed from broad applications of red, fuchsia, bright green and electric blue, is anonymous, as is the bassist of "One Song." In both works, the artists appear at one with their instruments, enraptured by the music.

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Smith celebrates big-name talents in works such as "Miles" and "John Coltrane," using a welter of colliding, agitated brushstrokes in high-contrast hues to analogize the high energy of their performances.

He portrays two awestruck fans in "Beholding Big Joe Turner," which is paired with North's poetic tribute: "With a voice wider than the night he commands you to shake rattle and roll....

You hide your disappointment when your children doubt you were there the night rock and roll was born."

For Smith, achieving a likeness is not as important as capturing a spirit.

In "Fade to Black," he renders the musician's head as a blocky black form above a blue triangle of suit and silhouettes the figure against a red background activated by streaks and drips.

Smith, who teaches at Paseo Academy of Fine Arts, has been painting for 3 1/2 decades and has exhibited at the Corridor Art Gallery, the Kansas City, Kansas, Public Library, the former Faso Gallery and other spaces in the area.

"Colors of Jazz," his first museum show, is his biggest exhibit to date and is the latest in a series of strong exhibits at the Jazz Museum organized by artist and visiting curator Sonie Joi Ruffin.

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Intimate images explore racism, injustice Caprice Stapley The Kansas City Star June 8, 2001 Heavenly personages, gang funerals and family are a few of the many images that make up Harold Smith's solo exhibit at the Corridor Art Space. Reflective and emotionally charged, his 26 paintings exert a broad appeal, while expressing what Smith terms "the life experiences of the average African-American person in America."

A Kansas City native, Smith holds a bachelor's degree from Union College in Lincoln, Neb., and teaches at a middle school in Kansas City, Kan. Smith remarks that he has always "drawn, sketched and painted," but only recently has his work been publicly displayed - a move that sparked controversy.

During a recent exhibit of Smith's work at the Kansas City Kansas Public Library, titled "Red, White & Black: Expressions of Middle Class Black Rage," some library patrons were disturbed by the artist's handling of the American flag. One piece, for example, displayed a ripped and burned American flag set against a black background. Despite this upset, the exhibit travels to a San Francisco library in November.

Although less politically provocative than his show at the library, Smith's current exhibit also explores themes of injustice and racism and includes a few pieces from the library exhibit. Two of these, thickly painted, striking abstractions labeled "Emmit Till" and "Lady Justice," are Smith's best at the gallery.

Also particularly moving is "The Mourning." Executed in white, black and gray, the intimate picture captures the scene of a mother and two daughters staring at an open casket, the mother's hands gently placed on her daughters' shoulders. Smith leaves their faces blank, with no identifying features, a strategy that effectively makes these figures universal.

In other works, detailed faces convey Smith's personal perceptions. The flatly painted face of "Mrs. Brown" is a composite of the various African-American female teachers who nurtured and encouraged Smith and others, making them "almost feel as if we were her kids."

Smith's visions of angels reflect spirituality and thoughts of the afterlife as well as a childhood realization: "When I was a kid, growing up Catholic, all the angels I saw were white. When I got older, it dawned on me that either angels have no race or there are some black angels."

The halo - a typical angelic symbol - distinguishes the celestial body in "Black Angel 2," a fantastic painting, peaceful in its aura. A halo represents something different, though, in "Family," a lamentation of the destruction of the African-American family and its consequences on a generation.

Other canvases, such as "Yellow," a painting of one of Smith's neighbors, embody his feeling of community. The bright yellow of the young girl's dress stands out against a white background.

The lack of any kind of landscape or setting functions to focus attention on the figure; the simplicity of this work makes it charming.

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“Smith leaves their faces blank, with no identifying features, a strategy that effectively makes these figures universal.�

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Jazzin Up Art Marilyn Bellemore The Newport Times August 2, 2006 In an old, run-down building in Kansas City, Kansas smoke fills the air as people crowd together to drink, laugh and listen to the live music of Wynton Marsalis or Jay McShann. It's a trendy and happening place but faded photos on the walls hold memories of decades long past. The Mutual Musicians Foundation (MMF) on Highland Avenue is a place where Count Basie and Louie Armstrong once played.

Today, it's a hang for locals like artist Harold Smith who goes there to sketch performers into the wee hours of the morning.

Smith claims to have coined the term "jazzstracts," five years ago, which are brightly colored jazz-inspired abstract paintings. His work will be on display at Montanaro Gallery in "Musical Sessions," which opens Friday, August 4.

"I go to the different jazz venues. I don't go to the mainstream ones," explained Smith who also spends time at the Blues Room of the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City. "My preference is MMF. There's a certain amount of energy there. It's a place where jazz musicians go after the clubs close and jam for themselves and they play until the sun comes up."

The acrylic painter said he'll have a drink or two but mostly he's there to sit and watch. The musicians don't rehearse but take the lead from each other to create their own flavor. In a similar way, Smith observed, "I think about how without planning ahead and taking raw materials you can take each color, stroke and brush and make it fit into something. I don't go out of my way to make it look realistic. I try to evoke the color and energy of jazz - the music and lifestyle." “There's a certain amount of energy there. It's a place where jazz musicians go after the clubs close and jam for themselves and they play until the sun comes up." “And what he's come up with are paintings that really rock.�

And what he's come up with are paintings that really rock. Using simple lines and vibrant inyour-face hues "Jazzstract Duet" shows a pair of saxophone players in blue, pink, red and yellow. "Trumpet Player" is decked out in green, blue, orange and red. Smith said most of his work is not of a particular person although he has depicted John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday and Thelonious Monk.

Growing up an African-American in Kansas City, it was hard not to be exposed to jazz music. In fact, Smith's uncle played with Duke Ellington.

By the time Smith reached his teens he was painting up a storm as a self-taught artist. But he realized he'd need to study something where he could make a living. He earned a bachelor's in computer science from Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska and a master's in teaching from Webster University in Kansas City. He now teaches computer science to high school students.

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Smith said he watches very little television so has time to paint a couple of hours each day in his living room. His work provides a visual representation of a musical experience and he'd like to convey that style in club murals as a future project. He stressed that even if you don't like music the paintings will appeal to lovers of art and vibrancy.

"If you look at the history of jazz you find it was an art form that helped carry an oppressed people through a time of oppression," he said "It helped the Black people in the 30s, 40s and 50s. That whole era of segregation and racism. It kept the spirit alive and gave Black people along with the church a place of celebration, a thing of beauty in a world of tragedy. If we look at the spirit of perseverance and embrace the beauty of life despite what's going on around you,.

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An Interview with Jazz Painter Harold Smith, Jr. Forty-five year old Kansas City resident, Harold Smith, Jr., knows how to make jazz rhythms crescendo on canvas. He has been painting works of art in his spare time for the last 35 years.

Through his side-hustle (Smith is a teacher by day), he is able to translate jazz notes for objective observers and with paint give birth to the most natural relationship between iconic jazz tunes and the icons themselves – like Coltrane, Monk, Davis and more. A trip to his website, simply titled, www.haroldsmithart.com, bears this out, along with press articles and an exhibition schedule and a banging virtual gallery on flickr. His works are a cacophony of dissonant colors, tones and textures that together make for a perfect express ionistic jazz tune.

Q. Describe your relationship with jazz When did you fall in love with it? And when you connect with it emotionally and spiritually? How does it make you feel?

A. I listened to a lot of jazz growing up, and I had a favorite uncle who was a jazz musician. I fell in love with jazz when I was still in elementary school, I just didn’t realize it. When I connect with jazz, I feel a sense of freedom, belonging and acceptance as jazz represents individual expression within the context of group expression. Q. Who are your top three jazz artists?

A. Tough one. Right now, I am listening to lot of Coltrane, as always. I am also digging Christian Scott and Esperanza Spalding. She’s incredible. Q. What has compelled you to re-create jazz on canvas?

A. Just a desire to express the energy and spirit I feel in jazz, almost like an outlet.

Q. From the intensity of your work, in my mind’s eye I see you alone in a room creating with Dizzy, Bird or Monk blasting, getting you caught up artistically. Do you paint to jazz music?

Recreate the scene when it’s you alone in a room with your canvas and your paintbrush.

A. Yes, I paint to jazz a lot. I’ll put some jazz on the CD player, listen for a while, maybe sketch a bit and just let it happen.

Q. What motivates you to paint in general? Do you focus only on jazz themes?

A. I also paint some socially conscious art and some afrocentric art. I think it’s all about expression — a desire to get it out of my soul and connect it with others.

Q. What do you like most about your work? What do you like least? How does this shape your being an artist?

A. Another tough question. I like that I enjoy doing it. It just comes naturally and easily for me.

What do I like the least? The fact that a lot of paintings are stacking up in my home and not in other people’s homes. I think it makes it a bit more of a struggle to let go because in the back of my mind I wonder if a new work will just end up sitting in the house.

Q. If you had the chance to meet one jazz great, who would you choose and why?

A. I’d like to meet Duke Ellington. He was a man who had a very high barometer of quality, had seen America at its worst in terms of race relations but did not let it poison his work and still managed to make a musical statement (―Black, Brown, and Beige‖). [He also] felt that he was a representative of his people and was determined to convey excellence in his lifestyle to represent us. That’s beautiful and I’d just like to talk to him about it. Plus, he really knew how to wear a suit!

Q. Which African-American (or other) painter has most influenced your work and why?

A. Hmmmm, another tough one. I think the artist that has most influenced me is Matisse with his brave and adventurous use of color.

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Q. If you had to choose between painting and jazz, which would you choose and why.

A. Painting. I think‌.

Q. What is your advice for other young artists who have a gift, but are too afraid to move forward with it?

A. Be authentic, treat other artists with respect, don’t let the money become the main motivation, and use all avenues of the Internet to get your work where it can be seen Above all, remember that a gift comes from the creator and with that gift comes a responsibility. The primary responsibility is to not be shy about your gift and simply put it out there for the benefit of others.

Q. What are your future plans for your art? What would be your pinnacle?

A. I plan to just keep painting, maybe moving more into oil paints. My pinnacle? To be able to look back and feel that I used my gift the way it was intended.

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Contemplating Jazz: Harold Smith

By Steve Brisendine March 11, 2011 Painting from "Colors of Jazz" series, Mixed Media on Canvas.

Harold Smith Colors of Jazz Talk about timing.

The weather is warming up, transitioning from winter into spring just in time for the opening of an exhibit celebrating a genre of music that runs from icy cool to smoking hot.

Harold Smith's Colors of Jazz opens tonight in the historic 18th and Vine District, with a reception from 6-9 p.m. in the American Jazz Museum's Changing Gallery. And yes, there will be music, with performances by the Paseo High School of the Fine and Performing Arts Jazz Band.

Longtime fans of Smith's work will notice a shift in style, albeit still firmly rooted in his high energy, color-intensive approach.

There's still plenty of vibrancy in each of his paintings, but several of the newer pieces feature collaged elements (vintage photographs and newspaper clippings) and softer color schemes.

The effect is one of acknowledging the passage of time and the long history of jazz, as well as its continued vitality.

Intertwined with the music's history is that of the country that spawned it. The piece above, for example, includes a headline from The Kansas City Call at the time of John F. Kennedy's assassination, making the painting a dirge of sorts for Camelot and the hopes that died in Dallas on that November day in 1963.

There's joy here, too, and pain, and triumph and adversity and passion ... the hallmarks not only of music, but of the lives of those who make it and are touched by it.

There’s a lot of art hanging in my house. My wife also paints. She paints black female nudes.

She’s never taken an art class in her life and I think her work is phenomenal. It kind of makes me think of Alice Neel meets DeKooning.

My primary display venue is the internet. I’ve been showing and selling on Ebay for over 10 years and also display art on Zatista, Ugallery, ArtSlant, and Fine Art America. I haven’t had a lot of gallery shows lately but I have show in some local offices courtesy of ArtsKC’s ―Now Showing‖ program.

I also donate art to the Gifted Hands Gift Shop in Crown Center. Gifted Hands funds a domestic violence prevention program so I always try to keep some work in there.

I think one of my reasons for being here is to paint. I think I am saying something with the brush but I’m not always sure what it is...

Most of my artwork is inspired by jazz, Smith writes. Not just the sounds and personalities of jazz but by the spirit of energy, diversity, and personal expression within the context of group expression that jazz embodies. To me, this is the spirit of life and love. I see each brushstroke and color as a separate note on the canvas converging to create a visual symphony of color and energy.

Can't get much cooler ... or warmer ... than that.

Harold Smith 58

A Gallery feature.

Present Magazine Harold Smith 2011-03-12 Harold Smith currently has a solo exhibition, Colors of Jazz, at the American Jazz Museum. In this Gallery feature, you can learn more about Harold Smith by viewing his video and looking at his astonishing paintings of bold strokes and vibrant colors.

Harold Smith.

Bio: I paint a lot on acid-free paper. I paint on stretched canvas and sometimes discarded cardboard or wood. I also paint on old doors and wooden framed windows. Each surface has its own texture and I like that. Discarded items seem to bring some character to new images.

I don’t really sketch out paintings before I create them and I don’t paint on a fixed schedule. I just do it when the inspiration is there and stop when it ends. It works best that way for me. I have never been satisified with a ―planned‖ painting. They always look too stiff and rigid for my tastes.

I use brushes and palette knives for my work. I work a lot with acrylic but do some oil here and again.

I’m not sure how I would classify my work. There’s a lot of abstraction there and figurative too.

Lately, I’ve been calling it ―Urban Contemporary‖.

There’s a lot of art hanging in my house. My wife also paints. She paints black female nudes.

She’s never taken an art class in her life and I think her work is phenomenal. It kind of makes me think of Alice Neel meets DeKooning.

My primary display venue is the internet. I’ve been showing and selling on Ebay for over 10 years and also display art on Zatista, Ugallery, ArtSlant, and Fine Art America. I haven’t had a lot of gallery shows lately but I have show in some local offices courtesy of ArtsKC’s ―Now Showing‖ program.

I also donate art to the Gifted Hands Gift Shop in Crown Center. Gifted Hands funds a domestic violence prevention program so I always try to keep some work in there.

I think one of my reasons for being here is to paint. I think I am saying something with the brush but I’m not always sure what it is...

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Jazz begins with the blues – not just the bent notes and field hollers, but the colors themselves. Blue is the primary visual motif of traditional Black music, from Ma Rainey and Leadbelly to Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and John Coltrane. Just think of the titles: Good Morning Blues. Mood Indigo. Kind of Blue. Blue Note, Blue Train, Blue Monk; a multitude of aural experiences rendered in vivid, ecstatic color.

But blue isn’t the only color of jazz. Listen closely, and you’ll see a world saturated with innumerable shades and hues. There are the red lights of Storyville, where Louis first heard the sound he would come to define; the “Black-and-Tans” of Harlem where races mixed and Duke practiced his own musical alchemy; the green and yellow basket Ella swung at the Apollo. Not all of the colors are bright, of course. Bird is only the most famous example of an artist whose taste for “brown sugar” and her white cousins led to an early grave; and the very real horrors of racism, immortalized in Billie’s “Strange Fruit,” are as dark – literally and figuratively – as they come. But this, too, makes a kind of sense. How else to represent the history of a people that has been defined more than any other by color, if not with color itself? Or, in the words of Andy Razaf and Fats Waller, “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue?”

Black and Blue take on a special significance in the work of Harold Smith. His paintings certainly represent Black experiences, but they do so with very little use of the shade of black itself. More often than not, blue takes black’s place as the shadow, the base or background.

This is not without implication. In science, Black is defined as the absence of color: a void where no light is reflected, against which other colors inevitably take precedence. But the subjects of Smith’s work are anything but a void. Just as Black music expresses a range of moods far richer than mere darkness and despair, Smith represents Black lives as awash in color: blues, yes, but also reds, browns, yellows, greens, and purples. These are expressions of a cultural tradition that is vibrant precisely because of its diversity – because of its color. As such, color is both celebrated and transcended. There is as much of Matisse here as of Africa, and vice versa. And the range of colors expressed is as broad and diverse as the sum total of American life and American music.

We at the American Jazz Museum are thrilled to be a part of this exhibit, this celebration of our shared cultural spectrum: from Bearden to Basquiat, from Bebop to Hip-Hop; reaching forward not just to the Monks and the Coltranes, but also to the Herbie Hancocks, the Bobby Watsons, the Terence Blanchards and Joshua Redmans, the J Dillas and Jay-Zs and Bilals and Janelle Monaés. And so we have endeavored to represent as many facets of that spectrum as possible, through a synaesthetic intersection of still paintings, moving images, and written poetry. But whether you’re seeing it, hearing it or reading it, ultimately, it’s all color. These are the Colors of Jazz, and they’re ours.

Zachary Hoskins American Jazz Museum March 2011

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