CephalicUS: A head of indecision, Portraits by Dan Smith

 Dan Smith’s upcoming exhibition “CephalicUS: A head of indecision”, will be held at the University of South Carolina’s McMaster Gallery from October 16 through December 16. Smith earned his MFA degree in Painting from the University of South Carolina in 1991. On Thursday evening, from 5 to 7 pm, he will return to his alma mater to speak informally during a free opening reception for his one-person exhibit of new portraits created during the past year.

The human face has been a favorite subject Smith has examined utilizing a wide variety of styles and subjects during his artistic career. His McMaster’s exhibit includes large acrylic paintings incorporating a variety of iconic portraits. Integrated into this exhibition are montage-based labels that integrate Smith’s verse with T.S. Elliot’s “The Love Song of Alfred P. Prufrock”.

Smith has utilized a variety of photographs to create portraits depicting and interpreting personalities from colonial to contemporary times. One such reference image is of Abraham Lincoln created on November 15, 1863 four days before the President delivered his address at Gettysburg. It was taken by Alexander Gardner, then a member of the Mathew Brady Studio. Another photographic image Smith has used was taken outside of Columbia by Joseph T. Zealy in 1850 in the form of a daguerreotype. The subject, Renty, was an African slave owned by Wade Hamilton and B.F. Taylor. A variety of additional subjects whose faces are represented in
Smith’s exhibition include Pocahontas, Thomas Jefferson, Black Elk, Sitting Bull, Frederick Douglas, William Tecumseh Sherman, Henry David Thoreau, William Burroughs, Malcolm X, Betty Friedan, Joseph Beuys, Julius Oppenheimer, Jack Kevorkian, Fareed Zakaria, and many others.