March In the Studio

We're coming up on the end of the season, and I can feel it in the studio.

This is always the time when everything begins to stack up. Commissions that have been developing now demand to be finished. New ideas are asking for space at the same time. I've got a visit to the foundry coming up, which always brings its own weight with it. There's a lot to carry right now. It's the kind of busy that borders on overwhelming... but it's also the kind of pressure that shapes the work.

Recently, I had the honor of attending the Friends of the Everglades Marjory Stoneman Douglas Legacy Celebration. I was asked not long ago to create the award for this event, and to stand there and watch it placed into the hands of Jessica Namath stayed with me. The Everglades is not just a place, it's a living system. A river of grass. It defines this part of the world. To see art become part of recognizing the people working to protect it feels right.

Back in the studio, it's a different kind of focus.

Right now, I'm working on a falcon maquette for a new public art commission. Every monumental piece begins here, in a smaller form, where I can study the posture, the balance, the intent. Falcons are built on precision. There's no wasted movement in them. You have to find that same clarity in the clay or the piece never quite comes together.

At the same time, I've been painting.

It's one of those stretches where the paintings start to overlap. I'll be putting the final touches on one, and before it's even off the easel, I'm already halfway into another. You don't stop and reset, you just keep on moving. New paintings are coming out of the studio right now, each one building off the last, each one pushing a little further.

Not long ago, I completed a painting of a sea turtle that was donated to the Florida Oceanographic Society and offered at auction. The ocean has given me more than I could ever repay. Being able to contribute in some small way to the people working to protect it matters to me.

And in between all of that, there are quieter moments where new work begins to take shape.

I've been developing a new set of bear sculptures and an osprey sculpture. Bears carry a weight to them. A presence you feel before you even see them. Ospreys are something else entirely. Light, fast, instinct-driven. They live in motion. Moving between those two worlds keeps me sharp. It forces me to stay honest in what I'm seeing and what I'm trying to say.

There's a lot happening right now. Some of it finished, some of it just beginning, most of it still somewhere in between. That's the nature of it.

You just keep moving forward, one piece at a time.

Be well, be loved,

Geoffrey C. Smith