Editors note: This story is part of a series in February exploring the contributions of local Black poets, singers and other artists.
BETHLEHEM, Pa. — From his “Black Jesus” series to a portrait of a missing girl kidnapped in 2000, visual artist Anthony Smith Jr. uses his platform to touch on issues that may be uncomfortable, but important.
An adjunct professor at Northampton Community College and Lehigh-Carbon Community College, Smith's work explores racism, sexuality and social justice.
“Every time I look at the racial ephemera that I’m playing with and trying to reappropriate, sometimes I can’t help but cry. It’s so disturbing,” he said. “So I have to do landscape painting to take me to some peaceful place where I don't have to live in misery."Artist Anthony Smith Jr.
Locally, art aficionados can find his creative pieces at the Bethlehem House Gallery, Banana Factory and Gallery Steel Pixel in Bethlehem and ARTHaus, the Soft Machine Gallery inside the Center for Visual Research and Cedar Crest College in Allentown.
His art has also been featured in exhibitions at the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, and the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art in Detroit, Michigan.
Seeking serenity amongst hate
Smith's abstract images are a mix of beautiful, lush landscapes and thought-provoking pieces that unpack hurtful, racial stereotypes.
A quick glance into the artist's social media pages reveals his eclectic style and depth.
Smith paints scenes of green fields, blue skies and bright flowers to balance out intense feelings that come about after creating a sensitive project.
“I'm working on a piece right now and the material is incredibly tough. Every time I look at the racial ephemera that I’m playing with and trying to re-appropriate, sometimes I can’t help but cry. It’s so disturbing,” he said, “So I have to do landscape painting to take me to some peaceful place where I don't have to live in misery."
Creating 'Black Jesus'
In 2016, Smith, who studied wood-block printmaking at Kyoto Seika University in Japan, was an artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont.
Around that time, a friend gave him sheet music that contained vile and racist lyrics — stereotypes used as racial caricature and constructed during slavery.
“He said to me, 'I know that these things are trouble, but I know you can do something with them.' So I started to play with the materials," he explained. "For a long time they just sat in my studio and as I started looking at them, I would cross out the words from the sheet music I didn’t like, use it as a backdrop."
Smith later developed that work into a bigger project, a stimulating collection of works known as the "Black Jesus,” series.
“I was thinking about ‘Black Jesus,’ as an ultimate Superman, a deus ex machina kind of character that was going to avenge Black grievances in America, like the social justice reform that was going to correct all the ills of America," he said.
His first painting in the "Black Jesus," collection features Jesus in the center with seraphim and angels praying around the savior.
"The angels were made up of Black slave posters from the Ecclesiastes and they had wings on them," Smith said.
Upon completing that piece, Smith continued with a “Holy Trinity" of works.
The second of the paintings, "The Melanated Messiah Spirit Bomb Attack,” depicts Jesus summoning angels and features Black gargoyles that he saw at a cathedral during a trip to Senegal, Dekar.
“In the piece there are spirit bombs, like a nuclear missile, pointed towards Earth, as to indicate a bomb that was going to explode hope and light and justice, like an explosion of goodwill," he said.
It was thanks to his assistant, who noticed a notch on the second piece's framework, that inspired the third in the "Black Jesus" collection.
“She said that looks a little bit like the Millennium Falcon, so I thought, “Okay, now I have to make a Millennium Falcon, based on “Star Wars,” but instead of the Darth Vader figure, it’s James Earl Jones in the center where Jesus was.”
The last installment entitled, "The Mos Isley Messiah Spirit Daddy Salute” also substitutes “Star Wars” characters such as Princess Leia with R&B singer Erykah Badu and C-3PO with Bender from “Futurama," a robot said to be of Mexican descent.
“The 'Black Jesus' series serves as an opportunity to use cultural information received from pop media to a way of understanding the social justice moment that we’re in right now,” Smith explained.
'Differential treatment'
His piece, “Sweet Child Asha We Still Sing You Lullabies,” was inspired by the disappearance of Asha Degree, a Black girl from North Carolina who went missing in 2000.
Twenty-four years later, her family still seeks answers.
For Smith, Degree's disappearance is an example of how missing Black children often do not garner the same attention in the media and by law enforcement.
“That got me thinking about differential treatment of Black people and how they are treated in the public. I thought about Elizabeth Smart and how there was this other girl, [Asha] that no one ever looked for," he said. "I felt like I wanted to remember this little girl that no one ever found."
In the painting, he used charms and other childlike trinkets.
"I had a little sister and so I was channeling my sister thinking about what she liked at the time, things like stickers and charms and anything that sparkled," he said.
Equally as emotional is Smith's "The Incomparable Yhana Evonne," which honors his sister's life and their relationship.
Acceptance and love
During the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and deaths of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor and Trayvon Martin, Smith began to sketch, the first step in his creative process.
"I want to talk about how our lives matter. That we experience love and not just like unreal unremitting tragedy....I want to remember love."Artist Anthony Smith Jr.
He also dove into another topic: his sexuality.
On his Instagram page, Smith's describes that creating a piece from the "Iwin Igi" series, felt like he challenged "his inner teenage gay boy."
Another similarly-themed piece features his first childhood crush.
“I was trying to [speak] about Blackness as something that was not just about tragedy, so I started to think about Black love. I thought back to the first time I acknowledged that I was gay and I remember falling in love with this little kid when I was 7 years old,” he said of the piece.
While Smith continues to confront racial inequality and injustice through his art, he said he hopes to also create work that inspires joy.
“During this cultural thing that was happening nationally – we're supposed to be sort of reflecting about how our lives matter, and I want to talk about how our lives matter. That we experience love and not just like unreal unremitting tragedy....I want to remember love. I want to make these pieces – artwork that is abstracted and goes through some of these cultural references, that are positive as well.”
To learn more about Smith's art and upcoming exhibitions, click here.
