Lisa McPike Smith
About the artist…
Born in Seguin, raised in San Antonio, matured in Colorado, and aging slowly in good old San Marcos!
I received my BFA in Studio Art, with a concentration in ceramics, from SWTSU in 1992 and I’ve been a professional artist for 30 years. My ceramics range from low-fire, raku, porcelain, and high-fire stoneware, and I’m starting to experiment with wood-fire with a great deal of guidance from the Eye of the Dog Art Center.
I take a break from my ceramics in the summer when it gets too hot to fire and that’s when I assemble found objects in silver trays which become the “frames” for my ideas.
I have a fondness for preserving history by means of assemblage art. Between the early 1800s and mid 1900s, a town in Germany named Thuringia housed 17 porcelain doll factories, each producing their own versions of penny dolls and frozen Charlottes that were sold in five and dime stores worldwide.
Over time, broken remains of the dolls began surfacing from the forgotten seconds that the factories discarded. While they still have artistic merit, I decided to give these unwanted treasures a second life. I like the idea that I am taking broken girls and turning them into something stronger and more confident with a new sense of purpose.
