The Cincinnati Ballet presents Smith's work on stage during Spring Festival performances on March 9 and 10. Costumed in some of Smith's clothing, the dancers perform selections from Paul Simon's 1986 Grammy award-winning album "Graceland" among other pieces. The Ballet is at the Aronoff Center for the Arts on Walnut Street in downtown Cincinnati.
Carter Smith has been one of the most passionate advocates for the growth and increasing sophistication of the wearable art movement - or art Couture as he prefers the appellation - over the last thirty years of its development as a new artform for the studio artist. "Our work as artists," he says, "is to explore and to be excited by that exploration. When we do that, the energy of creating an idea, concept or a new piece takes over, and that energy becomes imbued in that piece; it becomes part of it. "
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, the artist received his undergraduate degree in history as well as a graduate degree in sculpture at the University of California in Santa Cruz. His work has been used by Halston and Christian Dior and over the years
Each shibori piece by Smith is individual; together they form a distinctive, expressive and visually intense group, just like the creator's personality. Idon't know where my life is heading, but I don't care either," he states. "I look at a bird trying really hard to get somewhere, and it always looks as if it is flying against the wind. It's like that with life and how we usually exist in a set structure, one that we put so much effort into. Yet, if we would only connect with its energy, that energy will take us there. All we have to do is feel the wind."
Carter Smith was the subject of a Cover feature article in Ornament, Autumn 1997.
Author Carolyn L.E. Benesh is Coeditor of Ornament.