Malcolm Mobutu Smith is associate professor of Ceramics at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He earned his M.F.A. from the New York College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1996 and he studied at both the Kansas City Art Institute and Penn State University receiving where he earned his B.F.A. in ceramics in 1994. Smith’s professional activities include workshops, lecturers and residencies including visits to Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, and the Robert McNamara Foundation also in Maine. His works are represented at The Luise Ross Gallery, New York City and are held in numerous private and public collections including, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, FuLed International Ceramic Art Museum, Beijing, China, Haan Musuem and Indiana State Museum.
Guided by improvisation merging the graphic with form in space, Smith’s work rely on wheel-thrown and hand-built forms, most commonly presented as abstractions of cups, bottles, and vases. His studio interests include ceramics, drawing and 3D printing. The clay work is inspired by an interest in the play and tension of line and volume in the context of vessels. Informing these intersections are his interests in letterform, graffiti art, and jazz. Smith sees a natural bridge between clay modeling and virtual modeling; seeking new ways of rendering, conceptualizing and manipulating materials. This technology presents new plastic potential an opportunity to render in a virtual environment certain intuitions uniquely knowable through craft. Current bodies of work feature themes of the body, the fold as well as an ongoing fascination with cloud forms.