Sam Smith

Origins of Baltimore, MD, and studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) serve as substrate to more years than I think I can count. I came to NYC some 30 years ago to engage additional photo studies at the International Center of Photography (ICP), later engaging drawing/anatomy studies at the Art Students League. The year 2000 was a time where recognitions were had regards the deep & total impact of digital technologies on the social/techno canvas of life on this planet. As a visualist, these realities were particularly relivant, so efforts to bridge my ignorance of such matters were spent at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). While studies continued there the events of 9/11 unfolded in such a manner as to impact my life long visual journey in ways so severe as to turn that world completely upside-down. My works, post 9/11, have been an era of visual investigations zeroing in on better understandings of the whys-and-wherefores of such transformations. In doing so a clarity of two concepts have taken hold, that of transformation, and the interconnected concepts of the imagination/creativity. I view these ideas as clarion calls of the 21st century, ones that will sustain humanity. The photo-image, combined with technology, has served to observe what is, and converse with this til questions of what if? lead the way in this personal, visual sojourn to the expression of ideas.