Craig Mitchell Smith

This week my guest is Internationally known glassmaker and master teacher  Craig Mitchell Smith. He tells us how he went from a man of many talents and master of none to cobbling together many skills to put to use in his glassworks. He is on a mission to create a legacy of inspiring and teaching others to create beauty in this world.

craigmithchellsmith.com
https://www.facebook.com/CraigMitchellSmithGlassArtist
https://www.pbs.org/video/painting-with-glass-the-art-of-craig-mitchell-smith-btbvnj/

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Transcript

Tia Time with Artists, with guest Craig Mitchell Smith, recorded on 12/18/2020

Tia Imani Hanna: Welcome to Tia Time with Artists, the weekly podcast where we discuss the methods, challenges, and real-life experiences of living our creative dreams. What kind of creative warrior are you? Musician? Filmmaker? Painter? Choreographer? Poet? Sculptor? Fashionista? Let’s talk about it right now. I’m your host, Tia Imani Hanna.

Tia Imani Hanna: Welcome to Tia Time with Artists and my guest today is Craig Mitchell Smith, who is an artist extraordinaire whose done everything under the sun but has settled into the glass arena. So welcome to Tia Time, Craig. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Thank you. It's so nice to see you and hear you.

Tia Imani Hanna: So. I can't believe the transformation I've seen over years of knowing you. The stories you told me about starting out in HGTV and the faux painting and I remember when we lived in Lansing at the same time and they tore down the Capitol Building, and you took pieces of the Capitol Building and made moldings and….

Craig Mitchell Smith: I stole a piece of the Capitol Building and made molds of them, but they were  in the dumpster, but …

Tia Imani Hanna: All these kinds of things. And it's like now you're like making glass sculptures all over the place and in gardens and Epcot center and at Michigan State University and in, I think, Kentucky, and in Maryland, and St. Louis

Craig Mitchell Smith: I'm the luckiest guy I've ever met. It's been a blur. I'll tell you my story… I'm 57. I never considered myself an artist until I was 42. People say what did you do before then? I said mostly floundered. Here's what happened Tia. When we met gosh, that was like 1993. I had just come back from eight years in Oregon and I had owned a flower shop there that failed. And I'd done theatrical set design that doesn't pay the bills and I'd done carpentry to pay the bills. I'd done so many different. Things, but nothing captured my interest for too long. I was just either bored or bad at things in the real world. Anyway, I'd come back to Michigan and my partner and I had bought my family home, mid-century modern, cool house and spent several years restoring it. And then it was getting really beautiful. I loved the house. And then what happened to start my glass career was a friend of mine had purchased a class at Delphi Glass learning how to make coasters and small things with glass. And then she realized she'd scheduled vacation at the same time. And she said, “Craig, would you like that class? I've already paid for it. And it's non-refundable.” And I said, “Sure. I'd love to.” So, I took this class, and I was just hooked. I was just smitten with things you can do with glass, but pretty quickly, I was annoying my teacher because I kept saying, “Can't it be fluid? Can't it be dynamic, like it's alive. And why on earth would a coaster be glass? You're just making a round problem, a square problem.” And she was so annoyed with me. I remember she said to me once, “Why don't you get your own damn kiln and find out.” And then just throughout that same week, I was in contact with HGTV and they were going to do one of those six-minute segments on my kitchen and garden on the house we'd restored. And so, I'm sending pictures back and forth to Hollywood, California, and she says, “What's that thing in photograph number 14.” And I said, “What?” And what it was a cobalt blue gazing ball that had been my grandmother's and I'd had it for years since she passed, and a tree branch fell on it and broke it into shards. And. I couldn't throw Grandma away. So, I glued it back together in a new shape, just these kinds of swirls that intersected. And anyway, that's what she saw in this photograph, this woman in Hollywood. And she said, “What's that thing in the corner?” And I said, “I don't know. I guess it's a sculpture.” And she said, “Do you have anything more like that?” And I said, “No, but I'm thinking about getting my own damned kiln and making my own glass that would feel like that for my garden, only much bigger.” And she said, “Oh, that sounds great. We'll fly out a crew to film it in nine weeks”. And I thought, you can make this real if you want. So, when my partner got home for dinner. I made a really nice dinner and said, “Oh, by the way, I've got a Hollywood film crew coming in nine weeks. Can I borrow $5,000 for a kiln so I could make some stuff. I said I would.” And he said, “Oh, okay.” And I did. I just bought a kiln and glass. And I started making stuff and because I was untrained, I drew from my background. I used to be a painter, so I thought like a painter. So, I started cutting glass in the shape of brushstrokes and painting with shards of glass, not knowing that no one had done this before. And I just started making stuff that just flowed out of me. I already knew how to do something that nobody had done before. And I was just in my element just making stuff and, sure enough, they flew out a crew and they spent a day filming and all I was thinking was, “This is really fun. I'll get on TV and my friends can watch.” And then when it finally hit the air, I immediately got a call from a Chicago gallery saying, “Who represents you? Do you ship? And can we meet on Tuesday?” I had no idea that most artists were years and years to get any kind of gallery representation. And I was just on a roll making, making stuff, and having some success with it. And I did a museum show, like what, 18 months into making glass. I was, and I didn't know anything about the art world. So, I did this large-scale piece called “Faggot,” a politically motivated piece, and I'm setting it up and I'm so naive I didn't know who the other artists were. And it was oh gosh, I've done Jeff Berlin, Andy Warhol, John Michel Basquiat, big name hitters and I didn't know who any of them were. And I said, “Will the other artists be there?” And she said, “They're mostly dead sir.” And I thought, “Oh, I might be on to something.” So anyway, I just started making more and more stuff. And then the economy tanked in 2008 and the arts just died. And I thought, “Okay. That was nice. I guess I'll go back to carpentry or floral or something.” And so, I started making more stuff and next thing, I know I got a grant from the Arts Council of Greater Lansing and it enabled me to go wholesale. And the idea was that I would have to make something that benefited my community. And there was a garden in Lansing called Cooley Gardens, an urban garden, and I used to volunteer time and weed there, and I approached them, and I said, “How about I do an exhibition of sculptures in the garden? And if anything sells, I'll give you 25% of sales.” And they said, “Sure, that sounds great.” So, they did, and I sold everything. It was just a knockout show and it was ‘do or die’ for me. I thought if this works, I could continue this career. And if it doesn't, I'll just be a carpenter or fail at something else. Anyway. So, it was a big hit. And then the Meridian Mall called me. This is a big, 150 store shopping mall in Okemos, Michigan. And anyway, they called me in, and I was thinking, “Oh, Boy, maybe they want to buy something shiny for the mall.” And instead, they brought me down to this gorgeous 4,800-square-foot Ann Taylor store and they said, “Want it?” And I'm like, “There's no way I could afford, a place like this. I know what malls cost.” And the, my original deal was $100 a month and 10% of sales and utilities. And it turned out, I found out later, that the mall was failing and one of the big anchor tenants told them that if they didn't fill these empty stores that they were going to pull out. So, I just was in the right place at the right time and got a sweetheart deal. And so, I gathered as much stuff as I could. And suddenly, I went from my basement to having the largest single artist's gallery in Michigan. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Yeah. I remember. I was there for the opening, playing for you. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Oh, you played. You played. With Elden Kelly. It was… Yep. That was the… we had a lot of parties. We had a lot of parties. I haven't set foot in the mall since. I spent four years in the mall. Then the Disney thing happened. I've just had so many freaky-good things happen my way. I developed these poppies, these glass, brilliant orangey-red poppies that just made me happy and makes other people happy. Anyway, we developed these and I'd done another garden show. So, I'd done a show at Dow Gardens in Michigan. And so, then we'd had some publicity materials, I had enough money to print some stuff and I said, “Oh, let's send them to these different gardens.” I said, “Send one to Head of Horticulture, Epcot Center.  Orlando, Florida. It's all we had. And it landed on the head of the… landed on the desk of the head of horticulture the day that they were scheduled to have a meeting about a publicity garden for the movie, “The Great Powerful Oz,” and they wanted poppies for this garden. And they were trying to figure out, poppies don't grow in Southern Florida, they were trying to figure out could they chill the soil for them to grow and all these different permutations. And they didn't like anything artificial that they'd seen. And on the same day that they were holding this meeting my brochure with the poppies on the cover landed on their desk. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Wow!

Craig Mitchell Smith: And so, she walked in with this thing and she says, “Oh, what about this guy?” And sure enough, so Disney contacted me, and they leased a field of these glass poppies and something like, I don't know, like a quarter of a million people saw them over the three months that they were displayed. And that was an interesting experience, which I'll never do again. I'm just not cut out to smile for 10 hours a day.

[laughter]

Tia Imani Hanna: How did you go about making a field of poppies that large? Was it just poppies for hours and hours at your kiln?

Craig Mitchell Smith: Yep. And I had, I only had the nine weeks to do it. I seem to have this curse of being given nine weeks to do the impossible, but I always make it happen. Just cranked it out and that's when I hired two more people. So, I… it was, I was an employer, and the economy was failing, and I was doing everything I could to give people jobs in the arts, just when there was absolutely nothing going on in the arts. I've always done really well in bad times cause what I do makes people happy. So, in really hard times, I seem to be more in demand. I'm really super busy now working on another show that'll open in the spring.

Tia Imani Hanna: Fantastic. What's the show about this time? 

Craig Mitchell Smith: This one will be my first show in Michigan for ten years. I've been all over the place, but I haven't done a show in Michigan. So, Dow Gardens is bringing me back and I'm doing 30 sculptures. The tallest one is 22-feet. So, these are some of the largest… they’re certainly the largest fused-glass sculptures made. And they're all mostly floral design. So, we just worked up a giant hydrangea that's nine-foot-tall. These are just… we're doing this huge scale work and I'm welding all my own metals. So, we're making geraniums and orchids and 14-foot-tall hollyhocks and a thousand Monarch butterflies for one.

Tia Imani Hanna: That's beautiful. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: And that opens a May 29th (2021) in Dow Gardens, Midland, Michigan, and runs through October 15th. Then, on September 1st the show will be lit at night. So, I'm learning things I never thought I would like color temperature and I have having to figure out the exact way to light these pieces to make them look most magic. The expected attendance will be a hundred thousand.

Tia Imani Hanna: All of these nature-based things. Now you were working in flowers way before you started to do glass. Now what brought you to flowers in the first place? So, I'm trying to understand, maybe you don't understand either, but how you got from… did you always doodle? Did  you always paint? Did you always draw?

Craig Mitchell Smith: Always, I was always creative. I always had to make something with my hands. I've always been someone who had to putz with my hands and make stuff. And I remember my dad was an attorney and he wanted me to become an attorney. I would have made a lousy attorney. I remember he's… 

Tia Imani Hanna: I can’t see it.

Craig Mitchell Smith: I do not have a poker face, but he said that, “If you don't get an education, you might end up working with your hands.” [laughter] That's the goal. I like making things and always have, ever since I was a little kid, I was a gardener since I was a child. I remember one of my first memories is stealing tulip heads and giving them to my mother. And one of my earliest memories is just being dazzled by color. I remember scooting under the Christmas tree and crossing my eyes and looking up at all the colored lights and thinking, that was just like a drug to me. I remember being a little boy and I… my mother had a bottle of Noxzema, which came in this cobalt blue glass jar, and I just wanted the light to come through that jar. So, I scooped out the stinking stuff on the inside and dumped it in her clothes hamper. [laughter] And I was walking around just seeing what the world would look like, cobalt blue. It's still a thrill for me. I get to work with liquid color. And I feel like I'm painting in liquid color in three dimensions. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Well, you are.

Craig Mitchell Smith: I just… I still… I just love what I get to do.  

Tia Imani Hanna: You had to start teaching yourself this glass thing in this nine-week period. How did you go about doing that? 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Fearlessly. I just dove in and I'm so glad I hadn't had any training because I started doing stuff that the glass world thought was not possible. And because I didn't know that I could just experiment and see what worked and see what didn't. And I had a theater background doing a lot of sets, so I knew how to make things look good on camera, not necessarily up close. So, it did look great on camera and then it took years to refine it, the techniques we developed, so that now they look good, far away and up close. 

Tia Imani Hanna: It works. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: And teaching. I love to teach what I do. COVID has screwed up everything, but typically I've been spending a hundred days a year in hotels , just teaching. So, I've got a gig that I've been doing every year in England, two different facilities in California, Florida. I'm working on a couple of new ones. We spent a month in Sri Lanka. The strangest… I know this was so weird. I did the show at Epcot Center, and then we got an email that said, “Sri Lankan businessman wants to partner with you.” Delete. And we kept getting this and who thinks that's real? Then they eventually called the studio, and it was this Sri Lankan billionaire who said he saw the spirit of my work when he was at Epcot Center on vacation with his daughters and wanted to know if I would teach how I make glass for decor items that would be in his… he owns 37 hotels and 150 restaurants.

Tia Imani Hanna: Oh, so there. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: There you go. So anyway, I said yeah, I teach classes. There's no, we'd want you to come here. And I said yeah, I use really specialized equipment. These kilns are five to $10,000 apiece. And they said if you would design a studio, we would build it for you.

Tia Imani Hanna: Wow. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: And so, I thought this can't be real, but it was. So, I designed a studio in an abandoned casino that he owns in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and my crew and I spent a month making stuff for his home and teaching people. So, I was mic’d  the entire time and they recorded everything and how I do my techniques. And it was just the most magical month of my life. Just making stuff with people, half a world away. This glass career has just expanded my life in a way I never, ever could have imagined. 

Tia Imani Hanna: No, who would believe that was real.

Craig Mitchell Smith: Who would believe this? I mean, who gets calls for this? And then we just got a call. I'm dealing with a guy now who's on the board of several art museums in Los Angeles. He's flying me out in February. I'm making a meeting with him and he's building a gin distillery in South Africa and he wants me to come to South Africa with him. And just talking about a massive chandelier that would be in this three-story entry of the distillery that would be based on all the botanicals that they make the gin from.

Tia Imani Hanna: Wow! 

Craig Mitchell Smith: How cool is that? And I liked gin. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome! And you get to go to South Africa. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: To go to South Africa. So, this is… this is pretty thrilling.

Tia Imani Hanna: If they let you in at this point.

Craig Mitchell Smith: Yeah. I’m thinking… we’re thinking it’s going to be a year out before everything really settles down again, but I never dreamed that a life like this. What's a harder career than glass or art? And it's the only thing I've done. 

Tia Imani Hanna: It's paying the bills. You're able to build a company you're able to hire people. Did you ever think of yourself as an employer?  

Craig Mitchell Smith: Been an employer since I was 24 years old because I owned a flower shop and I hated it. I'm a really lousy boss, but I figured out how to surround myself with people who don't need to be bossed around, who work as a team. So, we are a team of like-minded people. I tell people that my name is on the ship, but there's a lot of people rowing. It takes a lot of hands to do this. I'm the most disorganized person I know. So, Jay Letterber has worked with me for 10 years and she says it's like walking a tornado. But she keeps me organized and keeps the world working and I have a couple of assistants who just help keep me on track. I'm like a dog who sees a squirrel. It's so easy for me to get off track and say, “Oh, I gotta do this.” And I need people to say, “All right, but only after you've done this and this.” So, Joan who is my assistant says that if I ever replace her, she said, “Don't hire anyone who hasn't had children because they won't know how to deal with you.” 

[laughter]

Tia Imani Hanna: I can understand that. If you have an artistic mind, it does jump from idea to idea. And that's how the flow goes. You can't stop the flow when it's going. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: And it's hard to change course and suddenly just do something that you don't want to do when you've got this great idea. But that's the part… that's the difficult part is being a business with this. What I do is between teaching, sales, gallery sales, and then these shows are… I lease them. So, the gardens pay me to lease the work for a show. So, I've had to develop enough business acumen to figure out how that all works, that benefits them and me at the same time.  

Tia Imani Hanna: So, what happens after the lease is up? You have to get… go and pack it all up again and then send it to the next place. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Yes, and I typically book it… and I book a show at least two years in advance. Sometimes more. So, we've got stuff planned out for… we're up to or booked out to 2024.

Tia Imani Hanna: Fantastic. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: And I can't release what they're going to be, but I want to do just one big show every two years. 

Tia Imani Hanna: No. That's wonderful. So, do you have storage spaces large enough to deal with all these different projects that you've done? 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Yep. I rent a barn in a secret location that's got a huge amount of glass and stainless steel in it. I have to insure the contents over 10 times what the barn is worth.

Tia Imani Hanna: Oh, my goodness. Wow.

Craig Mitchell Smith: Let's take care of that but cause the studio here 4,000 square feet and I'm hoping to move. We purchased a house up north in Charlevoix and building out a studio there that'll only be 2,500 square feet. So, looking forward to retirement, I may not want to do these giant show-offy pieces and just I may well just do things that are smaller scale and easier on my body as I get older, I'm doing 22-foot-tall pieces and falling off of 22-foot-tall pieces different at 60 than at 20.

Tia Imani Hanna: True, and that's what the assistants are for.

Craig Mitchell Smith: And I'm terrified of heights and everything I do seems to be way up in the air. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Okay. So, do you actually see yourself retiring at any point at all? Cause how do you retire If you like to work?

Craig Mitchell Smith: That'd be like retiring from breathing. I want to retire from being a business, but I don't want to ever retire from my work in glass. And I figure I'll teach for the rest of my life. I just… I love doing that, but I can see the day coming where I just don't want to do these giant, exhausting shows that take a full year to produce. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Sure. I understand that. And again, that might just be adding a few more people who do just the businessy business stuff.

Craig Mitchell Smith: Yeah, I need grownups around.

Tia Imani Hanna: Yeah. So, you did have those people and you just say, this is how many I'm going to do. Figure it out. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: And just say ‘no’ to stuff. It's really hard. It's really hard. All those years of struggling when you, you know, couldn't pay the bills, it's really hard for me to say, “Oh, I don't need anymore.” Cause you're just always remembering when it fell apart and you couldn't pay the mortgage and I think those hard times always stick with you. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Oh, they do. They do. And you can't be, you can never be, too sure what's going to happen. So, you always want to make sure you have a little extra coming in at all times. So, I understand that completely.

Craig Mitchell Smith: And so, I'm trying to be an adult about all of this and all I really want to do is make shiny things. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Are there things that you haven't done that you really want to do at some point? 

Craig Mitchell Smith: There's a couple of facilities. I'm anxious. So, I've got to some feelers out there's a facility in Houston, Texas. That's 20-foot underground in a cistern. And I toured it when I was installing a couple of sculptures there, oh, two years ago. And I thought this would be an amazing venue. It's a pitch-black, it's got one foot of water in the bottom that acts as a black mirror. And I just… and they're using it as an art venue now and some light shows have gone on in there and I just thought that's where I need to be. So, after this show is done and filmed, because the scale of the work would be appropriate for there. We'll be sending them a package and maybe they'll bite the same way Disney did. And I hate heat and it's always 64 degrees under there. So that would be perfect. 

Tia Imani Hanna: So, what does that… the 64 degrees… What do you mean? 

Craig Mitchell Smith: It's the cistern underground. 

Tia Imani Hanna: So, it's 20 feet underground, so it's always 64 degrees in there. Why is that? Perfect? Is it perfect for glass at 64 degrees? 

Craig Mitchell Smith: It's just perfect for me. I hate heat. [laughter] Oh, I hate… cranky above 74 degrees. I'm just not… I'm not built for it. That's why I'm the only person I know who moved to Portland, Oregon for the weather. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Okay. So, what does that? Scotch ancestry. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Irish. I’m a redhead  We like it gray and gloomy and cool and rainy and green. 

Tia Imani Hanna: I see. So, have you tried to go over to the Emerald Isle and do any work yet? 

Craig Mitchell Smith: I haven't yet. I've done England six times and absolutely love it. I love the British people. I love every moment that I've spent in England and I was scheduled there for three weeks this October. And, of course, COVID cancelled that. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Were there a lot of gardens that you worked on there? 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Teaching, that was a teaching gig. And so, I was… you don't know what kind of impact you have. But those classes all sold out. I did not know that I had a reputation in England from glass people. So, when the facility there contacted me. And I thought do you think, you can fill those classes? And that's when she said, “Oh, they're already full.”. And I, sometimes I teach here in the Lansing studio, pre-COVID. The last class I taught, I think was last November, here in the Lansing studio. And Joan, my assistant, handles all of the scheduling. I don't know who's coming to these classes. So, I've maxed out at 12 people and I did three sets of classes and they all sold out and I like not knowing who's coming to the classes. And so, I never forgot on the first one. Yeah, I was there to say hello to everybody when they arrived. And not one of them was from Michigan. I had two from California, one from New York, two from Florida, one from Texas. People… and one lady came from Israel to take a class with me. And that was so humbling to realize that there were people who knew me all over the world who were willing to fly to Lansing, Michigan to take a class. That was a moment I will never forget. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Oh, I bet. Now, did they say how they heard about you in the first place? Was it Epcot or was it other things?

Craig Mitchell Smith: Just mainly Facebook? I have tens of thousands of people that follow me on Facebook and because my work looks so different. This the only technology I can handle. The website gets updated whenever I can find somebody who knows what they're doing. But Facebook, I know how to do on my phone. So that's how I can communicate visually with stuff. So that's… I've had so many people that I didn't even know who is following my page.

Tia Imani Hanna: So, what about Instagram though? That's owned by Facebook to now. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Yes, and I, yeah, and I post occasionally on Instagram, but it's never gotten me the communication that Facebook has Facebook seems to be much more two-sided. Instagram is me just putting out images. People don't communicate with me through Instagram, but they certainly do through Facebook.

Tia Imani Hanna: Wow. Fantastic. Are there things in glass-making that you haven't learned yet that you want to know more about?

Craig Mitchell Smith: Oh yeah! We're always….I think next is going to be casting to do really thick pieces, you have to contain the glass and so making… what we're doing now is all of the pieces that I've made in the last couple of years are on single use, plaster molds that I'm working with my fingers with wet plaster and making all of these designs. And then I'm face casting the glass on it. A few years ago, I got so tired every time I became just a machine, I was making so many, I don't know how many thousands of poppies we made. And I just felt like I was repeating myself. And I got sick because I worked so hard. I didn't take a day off in 16 months and I was absolutely exhausted. And I thought, “You've got to reinvent yourself again and now come up with a way of making glass where everything is unique and one of a kind and slower.” And so, I developed a technique where I'm making my own plaster molds, and they are destroyed in the firing. So, you can't repeat yourself. And it made me… I'm a hyper person, this made me slow down. And best thing I've done. So next, I want to do big thick cast pieces and the thicker the glass, the longer it has to anneal in the kiln. The thickest piece of glass ever cast was for the Los Alamos telescope. It's 30 inches thick and the annealing time was two and a half years. So, you could make… I'm not going to that thing. But if you're making a, like a 10-inch-thick piece of glass, it's in the kiln a month to slowly cool. And so, I thought if I'm pushing my patience, there are pieces that I would love to make that are massive and thick and would strengthen my mold making skills. So, you make these pieces out of wax first, then you encase them in Plaster of Paris, a special fortified Plaster of Paris, then you melt out the wax and then you can fill them with a pulverized or powdered glass. And then make a single, a one-of-a-kind, sculpture that takes a month in a kiln. And I have nine kilns, so I can do things like this. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Yes, you can. And what about the height? So, they don't have to be like 20 feet tall.

[laughter]

Craig Mitchell Smith: No. They're just pieces for homes or I do a lot of for businesses. A lot of businesses buy statement pieces. And so, I'm in a lot of lobbies across America. 

Tia Imani Hanna: What about hospitals and things like that? 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Oh, I did! I didn't the biggest pieces I've ever done was for the Herbert Hermann Cancer Center here in Lansing. It's made of a hundred components of glass and it's over 40 feet long. And there was an open competition for this, it is the plum sculpture. It's filled with art. Hospitals have realized that art heals. And so, they're filling themselves with artwork and, here's an interesting aside, if you're doing artwork for a hospital, it must not be a color that comes out of a human body. So, that's cool. So, there's no red. No bilious green, no yellow. So, that's why if you're in a hospital, what you're going to see are a lot of blues and aquas and turquoise and white and silver and gray. So, that's why you see all those colors in hospitals. So anyway, meeting with the hospital people for the possibility of this piece, they asked me how I would approach it. And I lost, you know, my father to cancer and many friends. And so, I looked at the space and I said I would ask myself, “What is the shape of hope?” And I saw a giant spiral leading the eye up. It was that the eye must travel. And all of my pieces, hopefully, engage the eye. And there's something very optimistic about tracing a line that goes up. So, I wanted to make a shape that reflected what I thought hope would feel like. And that's why they gave me the commission was because of… because of that feel. 

Tia Imani Hanna: That's fantastic. I love that. I really love that. So, what does hope feel like? 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Yeah. Uplifting, and something that leads you up. So, I made a physical shape that felt like hope to me. 

Tia Imani Hanna: That's a statement for sure. Is that what you want to leave the world with your art? Is that, when you're doing your artwork, is that what you're thinking about? 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Absolutely. I'm trying to affect moods. I learned early on in life that I cannot change the world. I cannot fix the world, but I can make it look better. And like in my background in theater, I realized for those two hours that you've got someone paying attention to what's on stage, you affect them for that period of time and some of it lingers like a ghost. So, making these pieces that affect how people feel. What I'm trying to do is show people the beauty in nature. I just make it huge so they can't miss it. I make the colors louder than they are in nature, so you can't miss it. One of my favorite pieces that I've done, I think five times now, is called “Making a Wish.” How many… haven't we all, as a kid pulled a dandelion and blown on the puff and made those seeds spread everywhere. So, I've made one of those 22 feet tall. So, just the leaves are like four and a half foot long out of stainless steel at the base. And then this tall trunk, and then this just spray of stainless steel with glass seed heads. And then there are like 40 additional seed heads that are cabled on very fine, almost invisible, stainless steel hanging from trees, hundreds of feet away. And the whole idea is that it makes you remember to do that. And one of my best memories, as I did this piece for Art Prize in Grand Rapids, and did well, but I will never forget a lady an 80-year-old lady turned a corner and she saw this piece and she just instinctively pursed her lips and blew and said, “I haven't done that for 75 years.”

Tia Imani Hanna: Oh, that's beautiful.

Craig Mitchell Smith: So again, that's what I love about the whole thought of that is it's a secular prayer. Making a wish doesn't offend anyone, but it's the exact same energy as a prayer, it's just putting out good intentions. I tell people “make wishes” because some of them come true.

Tia Imani Hanna: Oh, yeah. If you don't make them, you'll never get the chance to, you'll never know. You'll never make that effort to get towards or go towards that wish. So, it could happen because you've moved that direction. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Yeah. So, make a wish everyone. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Yeah. So, while you're working on this and you're sweating and working and going “Arrg! Another poppy!” Does that still… does that energy get imbued in there anyway?

Craig Mitchell Smith: Absolutely. I've learned if I'm in a crappy mood, don't make glass. It's gonna… it's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. If I watch the news, I can't make glass. I have a perfect excuse to be somewhat uninformed, because if I pay attention to the world, man, everything I do would be black. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Hear that. Yeah. I haven't watched the news on a regular basis for over 30 years. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Good. It's bad for you.

Tia Imani Hanna: It just doesn't work. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Do what you can do to affect change but, man, do not. If I obsess over the gloom and doom of the world, I sure would. I'm trying to be the antidote to what's out there and post COVID, the show opens May 29th. By everybody is hoping that by May 29th we'll be able to go back to the lives we used to live. And I think everybody's going to be ready for a party and be wanting to celebrate. So, we've upped our game. The uglier, the world gets the more my commitment to making beauty is. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Yeah, I'm with you on that. That's been my slogan for the whole time of this show is to “Make Art,” “Make Art.” People have constantly asked what are we going to do, especially because of COVID? I said, “Just keep making art. What  has really changed?” 

Craig Mitchell Smith: You're gonna still make music!

Tia Imani Hanna: Yeah, you still have to do the art that you're here to do, is to make the art. So…

Craig Mitchell Smith: You just keep on keeping on.

Tia Imani Hanna: Gotta do it. So, where is the best place for people to find you online? 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Craig Mitchell Smith.com.  

Tia Imani Hanna: Okay. Easy enough. Easy enough. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: There's my website and my Facebook page. Again, I update the Facebook page regularly because I know how. I am an idiot with technology. I will always be an idiot with technology, but I know how to do Facebook on my phone, and I can take a decent picture.

Tia Imani Hanna: And now you have assistants to help you, which we're very grateful for. 

[laughter]

Craig Mitchell Smith: Yes. Oh, I need young people. I don't do the technology thing. This would never have happened without a delightful 23-year-old who understands computers and things. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Is there… what do you see as your legacy of your art? Like what happens to your art when you're gone? Have you made choices on that? 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Yes. But I don't want to go into that just yet. My legacy will be the techniques that I've shared with people. When I first started making glass, I was like other artists and thinking, “Oh, don't, I don't want anybody to know how I do this because they'll steal it.” Guess what? They're going to steal it anyway. So, you might as well charge them to learn. So, then my resentment just evaporated because they paid me. So, I thought that was an easy fix. So that I have changed how thousands of people make glass. Nothing is more meaningful to me than when glass artists tell me that I have inspired them to do something they never thought they could do.  

Tia Imani Hanna: Fantastic. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: And I never lose my curiosity. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Oh no. You can't. Now I know there's going to be somebody who's going to do something and you're going to look at it and go, wait a minute, how did you do that? And then have you gone to find other artists that to teach you things about it?

Craig Mitchell Smith: Yeah. I've written many fan letters to other artists that I whose work I admire, and I've had some wonderful conversations with people and shared and met many people through this amazing internet connected world. I was in Sri Lanka and a woman knocked on the door in Colombo, Sri Lanka, because she followed me in Facebook. She happened to be in Colombo and tracked me down half a world away. And she was given permission from the gentleman who hired me to participate in it for a day, just a magical connection. The legacy is really the connections you make. I don't have children. So, what I'm leaving behind is a mood that I hope persists.

Tia Imani Hanna: Thank you so much, Craig, for being with us today. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Oh, I cannot tell you what a pleasure this was to reconnect with an old friend. I think I met you in 1993. 

Tia Imani Hanna: It's been a while.   

Craig Mitchell Smith: When the world opens up, come back, say hi. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Craig Mitchell Smith: This was my pleasure. I'm so glad we were able to make this work and all my best to you. 

Tia Imani Hanna: Thank you so much, Craig. 

Craig Mitchell Smith: Welcome. Bye, bye Tia.  

Tia Imani Hanna: Thanks for being on Tia Time.

Tia Imani Hanna: Thank you for joining us this week on Tia Time with Artists. Make sure to visit our website, tiaviolin.com, where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes and never miss an episode. Please leave us a rating wherever you listen to podcasts. We really appreciate your comments, and we'll mine them to bring you more amazing episodes. 

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