Malcolm Mobutu Smith is Associate professor of Ceramic Art at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He earned his MFA from the New York College of ceramics at Alfred University and he studied at both the Kansas City Art Institute and Penn State University receiving where he earned his BFA in ceramics. Smith’s professional activities include workshops, lecturers and residencies including visits to Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Maine, The Robert McNamara Foundation also in Maine. His works are represented in numerous private and public collections including the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, FuLed International Ceramic Art Museum, Beijing, China and Indiana State Museum. Other areas of research and lecture interest for Smith include the study of graffiti art and comic books.
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.