Selected Exhibits and Collections (last five years)

2002 "Changing Hands-Art Without Reservation", American Craft Museum,
New York, NY.

2002 Solo Exhibit at the Heard Museum Shop, Phoenix,Az

2001 "Hold Everything", The Heard Museum, Phoenix, Az.

2001 Adobe East Gallery of Delray Beach, Fl.

2001 Blue Rain Gallery of Taos, NM represented in Chicago, Ill. Group Exhibit

2000 Blue Rain Gallery of Taos, NM represented in San Francisc, Calif.
Group Exhibit.

1998-99 "Head & Heart & Hands", touring exhibition presented by the Kentucky Art and Craft Gallery, Louisville, Kentucky.

*Kentucky Art and Craft Gallery, Louisville, Kentucky.

*Ohio Craft Museum, Columbus, Ohio.

*Yakima Nation Cultural Heritage Center, Yakima, Washington.

*American Craft Museum, New York, New York.

1998-99 Mississippi Museum of Art, exhibit sponsored by American Craft Museum.

Richard Zane Smith
Master Potter

JUST A FEW WORDS

My art education began as a child at home in Missouri. In the evenings all five of us kids would gather round listening and drawing quietly while Dad or Mom would read wonderful books to us.

Clay excited me from high school and all through my art school years though I enjoyed working with all kinds of natural materials, from leather to stone to wood. During these years, investigating my own native (Wyandot) roots became something of an obsession with me.

In 1978, I worked as an art instructor at a Navajo mission school in Arizona. It was there that I was first exposed to native clays, Anasazi pot sherds, and the woman who was to become my wife and soulmate. Our first year together we lived on the road, worked orchards, and as a ranchhand in Idaho. There we lived out of an old haywagon that I fixed into a little shack. Winter came and we headed south and camped out for four months south of the Superstition Mountains where I made small burnished pots to sell for grocery and gas money.When it began to get too hot to work, even under the Palo Verde trees, we headed northward where Carol was hired as a teacher on the Navajo Reservation. We spent eight blessed years in Ganado,where we started a family and I began to seriously pursue my art work. My wife, Carol, patiently taught for six of those years until my work began to be noticed. We have now lived in Glorieta New Mexico with our son Isaac and daughter Rachel for over 13 years. Having a rich yet mixed-blooded heritage has been difficult for me at times to sort things out and it still provides it’s challenges. But I am actively involved with other Wendat/Wyandots who are restoring traditions and reviving our language.I have a dream to help restore to our people the pottery traditions of our ancestors as has happened amoung the Pueblo peoples in the southwest.

I am convinced that creativity is a gift. It is a sacred responsibility; a seed to plant and nurture. I give all honor and thanks to Sondaichichia, our Creator!

©2002-08 Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma
64700 E. Highway 60 • Wyandotte, OK 74370

2004 Silver ADDY Winner
for design excellence