Mary T. Smith

Economic circumstance is perhaps the most reliable metric for whether a maker becomes recognized as a vernacular artist or receives the training that heralds their entry into the mainstream fine art world. Similarly, disabilities, which can isolate individuals from the activities of their communities, often precipitate an interest in and predilection for the creation of art objects, whether ephemeral or permanent. Mary T. Smith, who, in the late 20th century, created a vast art environment on her one-acre property, overcame both physical and financial constraints to produce a broad oeuvre of calligraphic paintings beginning in her late 60s. Smith was the third of thirteen children born to a sharecropping family in Southern Mississippi, where she and her siblings helped her father grow and package vegetables. A hearing impairment and subsequent difficulty in having others understand her speech hindered Smith’s ability to attend school, and though by her siblings’ accounts she was a deeply intelligent child, she could not continue her studies past the fifth grade. As a child, Smith regularly chose to draw rather than participate in the more active games of her brothers and sisters. Foreshadowing the body of work she created in her late life, her sister Elizabeth notes that “When the rest of us were doing hopscotch, Mary would get on the ground somewhere else and draw pictures in the dirt and write funny things by the pictures.”1

Smith did not possess the house and property where she would build her art environment and create her sprawling body of work until the 1940s, when the father of her only son built her a home off of State Road 51 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. She retired in the late 1970s, and after sourcing corrugated tin from a nearby refuse pile to build herself a fence, Smith began to use the material as the support for gestural paintings which she displayed throughout her yard and on the outside of her home, where they were regularly seen by travelers on the highway.2 These works, which typically depicted figures and were often accompanied by inscriptions, soon became a source of income for Smith, as those passing her home bought individual pieces. Eventually, the demand for her work became such that Smith struggled to replace paintings at the rate that they sold. Attuned to the interest that her work was receiving, Smith acted as a cordial and charming salesperson of her own work, often choosing to wear dresses that echoed the visual impact of striking color combinations in her paintings, particularly greens and reds on white backgrounds.

Smith’s body of work is wide ranging in subject matter and execution, even while remaining stylistically consistent. Deeply religious, she often made paintings that referenced her belief in God or the church, sometimes as surprisingly utilitarian objects which seemed to function as signs for those passing-by. The Lord is for Me depicts four stylized faces in Smith’s readily identifiable calligraphic hand which are flanked on either side by inscriptions. On the left, “We [are] at church” suggests that the figures, perhaps a family, are members of a congregation, while the rest of the inscription remains incomprehensible. On the right, Smith wrote in red “The Lord is for me,” transforming what initially seems like practical communication into a mediative statement that could be interpreted as a thought or the collective thoughts of the four figures. Their reserved, yet alert, expressions suggest that they are listening to a sermon. The shift in perspective—from collective to singular, from functional to contemplative—within the work’s inscription creates a rich world for the viewer that is belied by Smith’s restrained brushwork and use of color.

The use of multiple perspectives in Smith’s inscriptions also appears in the figural work Mr. Tombar, which functions as both a portrait and an effigy. Sharply dressed in a striped suit, button up shirt, and tiny black shoes, the life-size figure features mobile arms that can move up and down via screws connecting them to the body. This work is made of the same tin as The Lord is for Me, exemplifying the dexterity with which Smith transformed a material that was readily available for her experimentation into various forms. Smith announces the name of the figure at the top of the work, “This is Mr. Tombar.” However, the description at the bottom, “I want [an] apartment,” is more ambiguous. Again, Smith’s shifting perspective broadens the scope—but also leaves open to interpretation the narrative of—the work. Is Mr. Tombar dressed in his best to plead his case for a domicile? Or is the inscription meant to be a request to the figure from the point of view of the viewer, who is now at the mercy of Tombar’s whims? The figure’s face, which could either be read as aggressive or anxious, leaves few clues as to the answer, and Smith herself likely would have been intimately familiar with both circumstances. Much like in the remarkable display she created through the accumulation of the pieces outside her home in the 1980s, in both this work, and in The Lord is for Me, Smith presents narratives that speak to the experiences of her life as an impoverished woman in rural Mississippi while also daring the viewer to enter that world and experience its joys and tribulations.

Anastasia Kinigopoulo