{"id":4394,"date":"2019-02-12T12:39:04","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T17:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lovepeacenslander.com\/?p=4394"},"modified":"2019-02-12T12:41:42","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T17:41:42","slug":"art-smith-the-art-of-precious-metal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lovepeacenslander.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/12\/art-smith-the-art-of-precious-metal\/","title":{"rendered":"ART SMITH, THE ART OF PRECIOUS METAL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arthur Smith was born to Jamaican parents in Cuba in 1917. His family settled in Brooklyn in 1920 and Smith showed artistic talent at an early age, winning honorable mention as an eighth grader in a poster contest held by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Encouraged to apply to art school, he received a scholarship to Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. There he was one of only a handful of black students, and his advisors tried to steer him towards architecture, suggesting he might readily find a job in the civil sector of that profession.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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His lack of proclivity for mathematics eventually forced him to abandon this path, however, and he turned to commercial art and a major in sculpture, training that would prove invaluable. After graduating in 1940, Smith worked first with the National Youth Administration and later for Junior Achievement, an organization devoted to helping teenagers find employment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He took a night course in jewelry making at New York University. That and the friendship with Winifred Mason, a black jewelry designer who became his mentor, set him on the course of his adult artistic life. Mason had a small jewelry studio and store in Greenwich Village, and Smith became her full time assistant. He subsequently moved from Brooklyn to the Village\u2019s Bank Street.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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In 1946 Smith opened his own studio and shop on Cornelia Street in the village with the financial assistance of a near-stranger who wished to undermine Mason because of bad feelings over business transactions. Cornelia Street was an \u201cItalian block\u201d then, and Smith suffered racial violence from some of his neighbors. His store-front windows were smashed on one occasion and he was made to feel dangerously unwanted.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Soon after, he moved to 140 West Fourth Street just 1\/2 block from Washington Square park, the heart of Greenwich Village where as an openly gay black artist he felt more at home.The new store was better located business-wise and socially, and Smith\u2019s career began to take off. In addition to selling from this new location, he started to sell his wares to craft stores in Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago.<\/p>\n