Mark Lesly Smith, PhD
For four decades, Mark Lesly Smith, PhD, has been a leader in the Texas visual arts community. Working as curator, art historian, professor, and arts administrator, Smith is also a noted visual artist. His magnum opus--The Hope Suite--is composed of 44 individual works of art and is part of the permanent collection of the Barack Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago, Illinois, scheduled to be open in 2026. Smith's Image and Word In The Prints of Robert Rauschenberg was the subjects of his PhD dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin. Smith is a distinguished on the work of Rauschenberg, and has authored scholarly texts on his printmaking. He is also the author of of several books about 20th century and contemporary American art and artists, including Flatbed Press at 25.
Smith co-founder the Austin-based Flatbed Press (Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking) in 1989 and served as its co-director and gallery director for nearly 25 years. From the beginning, Smith and co-founder Katherine Brimberry sought to make Flatbed Press a collaborative print shop with an ethos of creative experimentation. The duo took inspiration and cues from the models of Peregrine Press in Dallas, Universal Limited Art Editions in New York, Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, and Crown Point Press in San Francisco. During their partnership, Smith and Brimbrerry collaborated with a diverse array of compelling and noteworthy contemporary artists from all across America and internationally. Both having deep roots in State of Texas, the always payed close attention to home-grown talent.
His varied career has included fine arts administration and teaching at Southwestern University, University of Texas at Austin, and Herron School of Art & Design at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis. Smith served as board preident if Texas Fine Art Association, Associate Dean of the College of Fine Arts at UT-Austin, Chair of the Department of Art at Southwestern University in Georgetown, and Professor of Art at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, Indiana.
He is a native of the Texas Red River Valley and is a student of the collision of Southern and Western cultures that characterizes that region.
The Mark Smith Symbol
My symbol--what printmakers call a “chop”--is initially inspired by the small, red artists’ symbols on Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts. Contemporary artists, master printers and publishing shops now use blind-embossed chops on original prints and other works on paper.
I designed my chop to include two themes. The surrounding line is a snake eating its own tail, which is the ouroboros, an ancient emblem of regeneration, wholeness, and infinity. The interior represents the grasslands of the great plains where I grew up. These images combine the micro and the macro of life, and the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
My studio is located in Blanco, Texas.
Recent Media & Press
An article about Johnson City, Texas, in Texas Monthly Magazine
February 23, 2023
An article about K-Space Contemporary Third Coast 2022 Biennial (Mark Smith, Juror) Top 5 in Texas, Glass Tire
August 11, 2022
An article about the Hope Suite in The Sunny Optimist, by Ann Roberts
January 28, 2021
An article about Mark L. Smith's work in Johnson City, Tx, in The Texas Wildflower