AURORA

Dr. Charles Smith: AuroraJuly 14, 2019–January 31, 2021

Drawn from the artist’s family and community members, historical figures and subjects of contemporary news, Dr. Charles Smith’s figurative sculptures stride through a history of the African-American experience in the United States. Made of the artist’s secret mixture of cement and wood pulp, the 150 sculptures on view in Dr. Charles Smith: Aurora document both the artist’s extensive environment formerly located in Aurora, Illinois, and his lifelong commitment to social justice, racial equity, and education.

Dr. Charles Smith was born in New Orleans in 1940. Two childhood incidents of race-based violence instilled in him a lifetime of searing feelings about racism and inequality. When he was fourteen, his father was killed in what local officials described as a ferry accident, but in what Smith believes was a racially motivated murder. After her husband’s death, Dr. Smith’s mother, Bertha Mary Smith, moved the family to Chicago. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Smith went to the funeral of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old African-American who was violently murdered by racists in Mississippi.

Dr. Charles Smith, African-American Heritage Museum & Black Veterans Archive (site view, Aurora, IL), c. 1985–1999. Photo: Lisa Stone.

This exhibition is supported by the Kohler Trust for Arts and Education, the Frederic Cornell Kohler Charitable Trust, Kohler Foundation, Inc., and the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Arts Center thanks its many members for their support of exhibitions and programs through the year.

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©2020 John Michael Kohler Arts Center 2020.134.4557

After serving as an infantryman in the Vietnam War, Dr. Smith purchased a small property on South Kendall Street in Aurora. He found his home renovation plans dashed by a burgeoning artistic practice, first fully realized in a monumental concrete archway he built commemorating the 7,226 African-American soldiers who died in Vietnam. Soon, the project expanded to completely encompass the façade of his house and the front, side, and back yards with his memorializing, educational sculptures. He named the site The African-American Heritage Museum + Black Veterans Archive. His project is simple: to use his art to change and challenge the status quo, to uplift the African-American community while prompting a reevaluation of history and a reckoning of our current condition.

A fastidious researcher, Dr. Smith holds a keen and critical lens up to the records and stories that have become accepted fact and looks for both patterns and cracks across time and narratives. He bears witness to the suffering of African-Americans and their fight for social and economic equity, beginning with the enslavement of thousands of Africans and continuing to the contemporary and ongoing struggles around police brutality against the African-American community. Several of the figures are shown in chains or with open lacerations on their back, their shoulders crumpled over in exhaustion and pain. He does not shy away from relating the profound trauma that has been inflicted on him personally. Some figures directly reference his own struggles—not only the death that attended his time in the Vietnam War but also the ravages of systemic racism and poverty that are rampant in his own community.

In tandem with portrayals of the violence that is visited upon Black bodies, Dr. Smith also seeks to revel in the moments of joy and uplift of African-Americans in this country; he celebrates moments of self-determination, creative expression, and life-affirming resistance. Sensuous women preen in bathing suits, cool youth listen to music in headphones and play sports, and the rich heritage of African-American music is celebrated through dancing lovers and ecstatic trumpet players.

Dr. Smith views all of African-American history as viable subject matter. He excavates history to elevate little-known stories of Black public figures like Howard McGee (the first Black postmaster general) and to celebrate those figures who made the history books, for instance George Washington Carver and Malcolm X. He simultaneously honors the everyday people in his life who are fighting for change or making a sacrifice for their community, such as his neighbor Nadine and his good friend Sergeant Ramey, who was killed in Vietnam.

Dr. Smith is first and foremost a teacher. Beyond the stories his sculptures represent (and the stories he tells that accompany the sculptures), the process he employs to make his work is equally instructional. Each sculpture is made first with a strong foundation; cinderblocks or large, solid chunks of concrete often serve as a base. They are then elaborated with musculature, either vines or rebar that he bends and shapes into arms and legs, and then

coats in a secret mixture made from the detritus of life (newspapers, sawdust, concrete, clothing and paint). Dr. Smith leaves these half-formed sculptures vulnerable to the elements to “weatherize,” using the rain and sun to expose their points of weakness. Once revealed, he reinforces the crumbling spots with more of the mixture until they are strong, repeating this cycle until the entirety of the sculpture is a single solid mass. For Dr. Smith, this process of “weatherization” mirrors the hardships that African-Americans encounter growing up Black in the United States. Through this method, the sculptures are in a constant state of becoming, never fully realized or complete.

Just as the sculptures are never “finished” for Dr. Smith, their identities within his environment are never final. As they continually deteriorate and are reinvigorated, each new physical form they take can warrant a new identity. As Dr. Smith continues his historical research and his meditations on news cycles and current events, he uses his sculptures to forefront the issues he feels are most pressing. Rosa Parks can become his grandmother who can become a victim of a shooting— equally powerful narratives he feels compelled to address. As an artist, activist, scholar, and educator, Dr. Smith’s work is never done.

After a fateful stop in Hammond, Louisiana, in 2000, convinced Dr. Smith that he needed to relocate his project there, the majority of the sculptures from his Aurora site were removed, conserved, and acquired by several museums. The 218 sculptures acquired by the Arts Center make it the largest single institutional holding of the artist’s work. Dr. Smith continues his work on The African-American Heritage Museum + Black Veterans Archive today in Hammond, documenting the ongoing struggle for equality and educating his local community on the tragedies and triumphs of African-Americans.

The sculptures from the Aurora site are one of 32 artist-built environments represented in the Arts Center’s collection. In autumn of 2019, the Arts Center’s renowned collection of more than twenty-five thousand pieces from artist-built environments began moving to the Art Preserve, set to open in June 2021. Dr. Smith will oversee the installation of his work in the new building. Hired as a consultant, he will work with curators to reveal new connections among his sculptures in the Arts Center collection and to highlight their continued relevance in our current moment.

Dr. Charles Smith, African-American Heritage Museum & Black Veterans Archive (site view, Aurora, IL), c. 1985–1999. Photo: Lisa Stone.

Dr. Charles Smith at the African-American Heritage Museum & Black Veterans Archive (site view, Aurora, IL), c. 1985–1999. Photo: Lisa Stone.