Skraelings for President
Bob Smith and Nick Wyneke
Bob Smith Artist Statement:
Began Art Education elementary school.
Teacher showed the class good and bad examples of drawing. Mine was in the bad art group.
I tried to draw but moved on to cameras and eventually video. In 1975 I had the first Public Access TV production on Somerville’s new channel.
I moved to New Mexico in 1978 and lived with an old hermit horseman in a cabin without electricity or running water. In that atmosphere I began graphics on t-shirts. My first was made to honor all Indians and became nationally popular. It is a map of North America with the words INDIAN TERRITORY written underneath.
I dabbled in the “Mail Art” movement and sent and received art from around the world.
After my old friend passed I moved near Taos, New Mexico and lived with the artist Will Powers.
Along with jewelry, Will did social commentary art and assemblage with found objects. He opened a whole world of unlimited possibilities.
Eventually I moved back to the Boston area and settled in Arlington. Through the years my art expanded with the help of Piano Dave’s and Zeitgeist Galleries and I owe Alan Nidel and Karen Boutette for providing galleries where my art could be seen by the public.
Never a grant writer, and with the Zeitgeist closing my large assemblage art was never very visible until Nick Wyneken and I decided to put our works on a bike path in Somerville. We did this without permission from the city’s Art Council, but for the last 17 years our Free Range Sculpture Garden has grown with many strangers adding their works without jury or judgement and is now alive and well.
I also have 4 large works that were invited to be displayed at Harvard Sq., ongoing for 3 years.
This show at Belmont Media Center is my first in many years to be inside at a gallery.
Nick Wyneken Artist Statement:
Presidents are fascinating who would want the job, many didn’t. Portrait artists have rendered them in all the vanity they crave, by carving out their visagases in a romanticized fashion I take those portraits and present them as faithfully as they were done I bring out uncanny and disturbing traits from my efforts.
I ran out of Presidents so now I conjure empresses, popes, and other volunteers that appear.
In this exhibit I will be displaying 13 portraits all 8x10, except for Captain Bellamey who is 30 in weight 8 in width.