Adam Parker Smith keeps it simple when conveying the intentions behind his sculptures.
He takes something that everyone might be familiar with and alters its form to open up a dialogue—one that encourages people to consider that sometimes they can be both serious and silly about the way they view art.
On April 15, Smith’s sculpture David will attempt to bring that dynamic-defying dialogue to the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art‘s front lawn as part of the city’s Public Places Program.
“The topics of my art are often these cornerstones of Western art and culture that are easily accessible and recognizable,” Smith said. “So it’s an easy access point for a conversation to begin about Greco-Roman art and the type of impact it has on culture overall.”
Smith’s reimagining of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s iconic sculpture of David is part of Smith’s Crush line of art, where he takes historical art subjects and compresses them into one cubic meter-shaped boundary—the process of which is as equally interesting as the conversations that Smith hopes his art provokes.
Working alongside a team of master carvers, he re-creates the iconic sculpture in a 3D modeling program before using that same program to compress it—after which the image is sent to Italy to be carved into marble.
Some, not all, of Smith’s Crush pieces have served as public art displays, but he said that David, in particular, is a perfect fit, down to the very material it’s carved out of.
“Some of the pieces in Rome have been out there for thousands of years, so it made sense to use this piece for the same kind of outdoor art,” he said. “I mean, it’s even made out of the same material from the same quarry the original piece is made out of.”
While the process of creation seems simple enough thanks to the modern-day tools at his disposal, Smith actually considers that simplicity to more easily convey the meaning the works might have lost when solely becoming classical art.
“When you have something iconic as these sculptures being used as subject matter for something as simple as a cubic sculpture, there are threads the viewer can make out that sometimes get lost in the traditional aesthetic often associated with these pieces,” he said. “Those threads are meant to inspire a more conversational nature for the work.”
That isn’t to say that Smith considers his work to be overtly profound; that’s part of the appeal for him having his work be part of a public display. While his sculptures are inspired by the traditional Greco-Roman idea of art, there’s humor in the idea that something as iconic as Bernini’s original David can be crushed into a compact cube version of itself.
“I think that’s something you can see even in the non-cube versions of a lot of these pieces,” he said with a laugh. “They are such major ideas in pop culture that seeing it in this new state—if it doesn’t at least get a chuckle out of you—will hopefully bring out that conversational nature that gets lost in the idea of these pieces having to be ‘traditional’ art.”
SLOMA Chief Curator Emma Saperstein said she feels David will inspire a newfound appreciation for the public art in the city by demonstrating the range of art that’s present in SLO and through opening up a new dialogue about the city’s sometimes polarizing perception of public art.
“After seeing such markedly different expressions of sculpture, Adam’s piece now offers the opportunity for the community to question and consider what monuments are and deconstruct our thinking around them,” she said.
The Public Places Program has strived to push public art in that exact direction since 2021, something that SLO Mayor Erica A Stewart is excited to see David continue.
“The city knows that public art brings our community’s public spaces to life … providing everyone with the opportunity to experience different mediums and different artists,” Stewart said. “Parker Smith’s work challenges the norm with beauty and strength.”
To take something as profound and technically impressive as a marble sculpture from the 17th century and break it down into a simple cube seems absurd in concept, but Smith feels David is more than a novelty.
“Those original sculptures have become ubiquitous with dusty displays in forgotten museums,” he said. “To take them and recontextualize them in a way that allows thinking about them again in a new way is important, especially in a public arena where our perception of art can sometimes be muddled by the fact that we are constantly surrounded by it.” Δ
Freelancer Adrian Vincent Rosas is reflecting on how he views the art around him. Reach him at arosas@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Apr 13-23, 2023.