Victoria Smith

BayouArtist VICTORIA SMITH grew up surrounded by art and artistic women. Her work is inspired by her life, and the connections she’s made with people.

article by APRIL CLARK HONAKER
photography by KELLY MOORE CLARK

Artist Victoria Smith can’t pinpoint a moment when she decided to become an artist. Instead, she said, “I think art just finds you. When it’s always an interest, you just keep experiencing and entering new things.” Fortunately, she grew up surrounded by art, artistic women, and creative possibilities that fostered this kind of exploration.

Her mom Maria was very artistic and painted several murals in San Francisco, including some that are still there today. Because Maria was an artist, Victoria was always supported creatively. In fact, creating and the messes that came with it were a part of their daily life. On one particular day, Victoria and her mom visited a huge arts and crafts table at the mall. While Victoria was making her craft, Maria was asking the person behind the table, “After everything is done, can we have the glitter?” That day, the two of them left a shimmery trail through the mall, to the car, and beyond. Other moms might have been horrified at the thought of welcoming glitter into their lives, but Victoria’s mom not only welcomed it, she solicited it. “She’s the reason I took up art,” Victoria said, “She’s the best.”

Maria was also there beside Victoria for her first memorable success as an artist. She was there coloring with the same Mr. Sketch scented markers while Victoria drew the winning scarecrow in a poster contest sponsored by their local farmers’ market. When Victoria thinks of her beginnings as an artist, she said, “I always think of the picture of me standing there with the blue ribbon. I think of us working together and the smell of those markers.”
In addition to having a creative mom on her side, Victoria also had on her side the maker’s spirit of her grandmother, who came to the U.S. from El Salvador. “She wasn’t artistic in the normal sense,” Victoria said, “but she was always sewing.” Victoria recalls taking her scissors and trying in her own childlike way to mimic her grandmother’s patterns. “The way she was always making something really inspired me,” Victoria said. “She was phenomenal.”

Another woman who had a lasting impact on Victoria was an art teacher she had for only a month and a half while living in Sunnyvale, California. She was 8 at the time, and that teacher, Corinne Innis, an African American artist who worked in the Bay area, changed how she saw artists and teachers. Knowing her and watching her work shattered the idea that teachers never did anything other than teach. Innis made such a big impact on Victoria that they’ve kept in touch. Watching someone she knew when she was 8 become a successful podcaster and active artist in New York has been an ongoing inspiration. “You never know where you’re gonna end up,” she said.

One thing Victoria learned early on from these women was the power art has to connect people and bring them closer together. Not only did it strengthen her connections with these women but also with her younger sister, Mashall. Starting and growing their business, Pint Size Printers, was a bonding experience. “We learned a lot about each other through depending on each other,” she said. Now Mashall is in Portland, Oregon, and Victoria misses her greatly, but she’s thankful for the business they started because it brought another important connection into her life. It’s how she met her soon-to-be husband, Langston Amos. He was in a band, and they wanted t-shirts. They had heard about Pint Size Printers, and the rest is history. The happy couple will be married in April.

The connections forged for Victoria through printing and her art have been life changing to say the least, but even the smallest connections have made an undeniable impact. “I’ve met so many people because it allows people to reach out to you,” she said. “I love when people can connect to a piece.” Because much of her work is inspired by her life, those connections have often happened through a shared experience. For example, she once created a series inspired by a trip to New Orleans with her best friend. Those pieces reflected the places they went and the things they did, often including very specific and personal details. But one woman connected with a piece because it included the name of a server they had shared at a particular restaurant. Because of that connection, she was compelled to add the piece to her collection.

Those moments when people connect and feel comfortable enough to share part of their own story are magical. They make memories and spark friendships, and they are the reason Victoria loves to engage people in conversation about her art. She’s even been known to advertise how important conversation is to her. Once, at a pARTy 318 at the Masur Museum, she displayed a sign at her booth that read, “You don’t have to buy anything. Just come talk to me.” Although conversation isn’t always necessary to appreciate her work, it certainly can’t hurt. One thing Victoria feels is intrinsic to each piece is that it always has layers of meaning—layers that can be best understood by knowing the backstory. “The image is easy to understand,” she said, “but the story behind it is almost a secret unless you come talk to me.”

On the surface, her work is often colorful and whimsical, but the experience that inspired it could have a completely different meaning. Victoria compares this element of her work to the way people often have public and private personas. She believes people often see her as bright, bold, and bubbly. In this way, the first impression she makes is similar to the first impression her work often makes. “But what’s going on underneath can really say a lot,” she said. Although she tries to create work that is fun and approachable, it tends to be tongue-in-cheek. There’s always a secret narrative behind it. For that reason, she wants people to ask questions. “I hope it makes them curious,” she said, “because I want to have that dialogue with them—that intimate conversation—even if only for a few minutes.”

Although Victoria is eager to share her current work and is confident in who she is as an artist and person, she admits that she wasn’t always this way. Despite growing into her identity as an artist since childhood, there were times along the way when she was self-conscious and questioned her abilities. In fact, she went through a period while earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Louisiana in Monroe (ULM) when she was reluctant to share her work and was terrified to let others watch her process. She would go into the open studio on campus after hours, but when professors or other students showed up to use the space, she would immediately pack up her materials, hide or pack up her works in progress, and leave.

This avoidance approach worked fairly well for her until she met Professor Cliff Tresner. Tresner, who is now the Program Coordinator forArt at ULM, helped Victoria realize she needed to show her work if she wanted to be successful. Not only did Tresner sleuth out her hidden works in progress, but he also told her directly that if she didn’t show her work she would fail. Because Victoria wanted to earn A’s and be successful as a professional artist, she rose to the challenge.

For the most part, the work she produced in college was formative and lacked distinction, but it was necessary. “I think in college I didn’t have an identity,” she said. “I was just making pieces to make them.” But Tresner pushed her, and there was a turning point in one of his classes where she began to see her unique identity emerging. He had asked the class to respond to the question, “What is drawing?” And after much thought, Victoria decided her definition would be simple: “marking on a surface.”

The work she created for the assignment was a 3D installation that included a handmade cedar, rectangular box that held 11 antique snuff jars with clowns painted on them. In addition, everyone who experienced the piece was given a clown nose to wear. The work was inspired partly by her lifelong fear of clowns, and the noses were included to simulate the feeling of suffocation she felt when confronted by clowns. As part of her planning for the project, she researched the psychology behind the fear of clowns, which is also known as coulrophobia, and she included the snuff boxes because she’d always associated clowns with the smell of tobacco and cigarettes. Every detail of the piece—every item, every mark, every color—was chosen with care. “Everything was symbolic in some way,” she said, and that continues to be the case with her current work as well.

Although her work tends to be driven mostly by experiences and emotion, research and reading have always been important components as well. For example, another one of Victoria’s shows was inspired largely by her rereading of The Velveteen Rabbit as an adult. It made her reevaluate the child’s idea of the story in light of her adult experience, and there was a moment when she said to herself, “I’m the velveteen rabbit.” As part of the preparation for this show, she found herself researching the anatomy of rabbits. Now, not only does she own two pet rabbits, Henry and George, but she’s also included a rabbit in every show since. They’ve become a defining motif—part of her identity as an artist.

Over time, Victoria’s work has gotten bigger and bolder. She describes it as vibrant and unapologetic with a touch of charm and whimsy. “Now I don’t mind being bold and being myself,” she said. “I’m a little freer and more confident. I’m just comfortable.” She’s also grown more willing to try new things and has even been known to let others watch her paint on occasion. One of the biggest lessons she’s learned along the way is that she can’t worry about what the public will think about her work. “You just have to get behind it,” she said. “Someone out there is gonna love it.”

Today, Victoria is braver and more confident than she’s ever been. “I may look really small and tiny and petite, and I’m a female,” she said, “but I have a big bite.” She has a lot of positive energy to share with the world, and much of that energy goes into her own creative process. But she also reserves a large portion of it for her work as Community Development Coordinator for the Northeast Louisiana Arts Council. After working as an educator and in a variety of other fields, she said she’s finally in a place where she absolutely loves her job.

While creating work as an individual artist allows her to impact others on an individual level, her job provides a platform for a more widespread impact. “I really care about our area and our art scene,” she said. “I want it to thrive because it has so much potential.” She believes a region’s art helps shape its identity and provides enrichment for its people. “It culturally enhances an area,” she said, “and it brings opportunity.” According to Victoria, everyone needs art. Engineering students need art for the visual aspect of their work, and dentists need to take a ceramics class. She hopes that eventually people will see that art is everywhere and that those who teach it and create it add value to our lives.