- Narrator: Impressive work is being done today,
both by established figures and by rising young artists.
In the decorative arts,
the concepts of modernist aesthetics
are applied to metal jewelry by Art Smith
in his Greenwich Village shop.
He makes all the novel items on display
in the attractive sales room and waits on customers himself.
Here's a sample of his unusual wares,
attractive however you look at it.
- The mid-century modernist jewelry movement
was a period of time in which artists were turning to jewelry
as a form of art.
Art Smith is recognized
as a significant maker in this movement.
Mid-century modernist jewelers
were creating something that was new and amazing,
and that was art, wearable art.
They were really moving away from the idea
of mass-produced objects and focusing more
on the person who creates the work.
- Art: The ideas come from just the fact
that one is a creative person.
I think about the body, I think about the neck,
I think about the fingers.
What could I do in and around a finger,
not just on a finger?
A ring can go around a finger,
it can go up a finger, down a finger, across a finger.
Really, it can be incomplete on a finger.
And the result is just as if
a sticky hand went into a pot of stones
and came out with a variety of stones clinging
to various fingers and in between the fingers.
- Art was a man of great sophistication and élan.
He always had that soigné about him.
He was very dark-skinned
and his hair was always well-coiffed, you know,
and he had on one of his rings.
He was also a loving person and a strong teacher.
- In 1974, Art Smith gets an invitation
to participate as a mentor and a teacher
at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.
The summer of 1974 focused on Black craftsmanship,
bringing all of these young artists to learn
from these sort of senior African-American artists
like Art Smith.
- I was a student there.
So I'm making things as I usually do,
chewing gum, stretching plastic,
soaking in water, doing something.
And he looked at my work and he said,
I will never forget this.
"I don't know what you're doing, but don't stop."
And this is from a classic jeweler, a classic metal artist.
He saw his job was to teach me how to employ his knowledge
into my work.
- This was actually my first real professional shoot.
Art was showing a great deal of confidence,
faith, and belief, and you were there.
- Adding beauty and grace.
- And advice. [Joyce laughs]
Part of my experience at Haystack
was trying a lot of different things,
and this was certainly right up there.
The pictures of you and Art, we were sort of just goofing.
- That was one of the positive things about Art,
that he took us as we were.
[vibrant piano music]
- Art: The ingredients that've always been involved
in my work are metal and wire.
Then the third ingredient, space,
which I use very actively, very concretely
because of my own orientation towards designing that way.
But also, it's a very cheap component.
- Man: [laughs] It's there.
- Art: Yeah.
- The jewelry was dynamic and sculptural.
It had so much mobility to it.
He was a jazz aficionado, and the way that the jewelry moves
and swings and swerves is so similar to jazz.
- He was a glorious technician.
He understood how to turn metal, saw metal,
grind down the edges and file them
and polish and to make them beautiful.
He took a humble material like brass and copper,
bronze, and elevated it.
One of the things that was cemented in my life
from a mentor like Art is to know
that you're not alone in this.
In fact, you should be holding the hand of someone else
who you push in and then they'll push you
in a different way.
- Clyde Johnson: You don't throw away anything.
That's one of the things that Joyce taught me.
You don't throw away anything.
I moved here to Baltimore in 2008
and completed my certificate in jewelry design.
All of my faculty members who taught me were white.
So when you start talking about entering
into a narrative or a conversation about your culture
and how you bring your culture and your identity into the work,
I had to find another voice.
Joyce had seen me tinkering with my jewelry
and she started critiquing me.
- Because you really worked this surface nicely.
- That started the mentoring relationship.
- I do have a suggestion, that I'm not reading it
as a face so well. - Okay.
- You might wanna shape the eye so you could drop the stone in
so you'll have a real eye shape.
- In schools and colleges, they're asking basic questions,
like, "Where are the teachers that look like me?"
If you are telling me that I can do this,
how come I don't see somebody like me who is doing this?
We need all of those stories, those narratives,
that archive of history to come forward.
And when you have that right brain artistic capacity,
you have a specialness that talks about a way of living,
a way of being, belief systems.
- Now, when you say I'm a mentor,
I am in the sense a person who believes you don't give up.
You have this one life and you have
the ability to make jewelry.
- Art Smith was many things.
He was an immigrant American.
His parents were Jamaican and had moved
from Jamaica to Cuba to the United States
to New York to find work.
His father was involved in the UNIA,
which is Marcus Garvey's movement
about Black power and Black self-sufficiency.
He was a gay man during a period of time
when people weren't as tolerant.
He was an African-American man, so he faced racial issues.
He received a scholarship to Cooper Union for college.
He graduated with a degree in advertising design.
He started a position in Harlem,
teaching kids arts and crafts and trades.
- Art: In the room next to mine was Winifred Mason.
She used to bring in handmade jewelry.
It was enough to somewhat fascinate me,
and I began working in the metal.
She opened a business,
and I was the right-hand man in everything
but sharing the proceeds.
- And he quickly outshines Winifred Mason
and his work becomes very well-known in her shop.
- Art: At the end of four years,
I came to the late realization that I could be doing
all the things I'm doing for her for myself,
and that's what I did.
I opened a little tiny place on Cornelia Street,
but the street was very antagonistic.
They were intolerant of Bohemians.
They were intolerant of Jews.
They were intolerant of Negroes.
Every time you went in and out your door,
you went through an antagonistic bunch of people
standing outside, saying things.
They were breaking my windows
and there was an attempt made to run me over,
and you could not get real police cooperation.
It was all really impossible.
- I know that he had problems, but that didn't stop him.
And that vigilance is one of the things
that we talked about.
Not only for someone who has a path as a jeweler,
but as African Americans.
The vigilance it takes to be true to yourself
and to your artwork.
- Just thinking about your connection with Art Smith,
my connection to you, I tried to make a piece
that put the three of us together.
Art's Lava bracelet inspired me.
The undulation, the movement.
- This is a piece of sculpture and not a piece of jewelry.
- It's both.
So took the beaded piece that you gave me for my birthday,
which is here.
This came from my grandmother's cemetery.
So that whole thing
of carrying both Art with me... - Yes, yeah.
- ...And my own family.
And then there's carrying Joyce.
- I think it's a glorious piece, and I'd like to see it on you.
- Okay, so here it is on his body.
For a man with prowess and strength,
how about a necklace that says that?
I think your grandma would be very, very proud of you.
You say it's reminiscent or refers to his bracelet?
So maybe it should be a bracelet.
- Okay.
- Because when you're staying within the family of Art
and you have something that looks like a bracelet,
make it a bracelet.
I know that he's in heaven right now
saying, "How dare they?"
But that's okay too.
I'll hear from him tonight, I'm sure.
- After the Cornelia Street shop,
he opens in the Greenwich Village,
which was considered more artistic and Bohemian.
He was able to keep his store open from the late 1940s
until 1979, and made a living at his art for over 30 years.
We go to art museums to see these wonderful pieces of art
in which an individual is expressing themself
on the canvas.
This is what these mid-century modernist designers
like Art Smith were doing to jewelry,
taking it and bending it, using its properties, changing it,
experimenting with different mediums and forms
and creating quite outstanding and beautiful work.
- Art: Pieces should really play with each other
and they should play with the body.
It should be fun.
It should be an exploitation.
It should be an investigation.
A good piece of jewelry literally caresses the body
and fondles it.
It enjoys itself and enjoys you, and you enjoy it.
[gentle jazz music]