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Cedric Smith, "Jockey Cigars," 2021, oil and acrylic on canvas, 72" x 96"
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After a move to Macon, Ga., just as the pandemic closed down the city, Cedric Smith started construction of an arts studio in his backyard. Getting to know his new block, he had a drop-in visit by one of the neighborhood youths.
Snooping in Smith’s new studio building, this youth pointed to an archival photo framed on the wall of an African-American man riding a horse. He said, “I didn’t know Black men rode horses!”
This is where Smith starts his artistic investigation, asking what is not seen. How is it that the Black man is not visible in so much of our country’s graphic history? Where are the positive and powerful images in our past advertisements, images that this artist would have seen when he was a small neighborhood boy growing up? What if the strong cowboy, the Marlboro Man, was a Black man?
Smith, a researcher and reader, looked into this very question. Where are African-American men depicted on horseback and in what context? The romantic western cowboy, the onward soldier, the jockey, or the gentleman hunter? This exhibition, titled Horse Power, is Smith’s ongoing inquiry of these missing symbols as he asks, “What if these depictions in mass visual culture had been available for role models?”
Born in 1970 in Philadelphia, Pa., Smith found art in a different location. From the start, he had talent with the pencil and paper. He drew a lot at his first job in a barber shop. A regular customer, artist William Tolliver, invited this young man to his studio, where Smith saw the life and career of a working artist, and decided to follow that path. Especially poignant is neither he nor Tolliver had formal art education.
Snooping in Smith’s new studio building, this youth pointed to an archival photo framed on the wall of an African-American man riding a horse. He said, “I didn’t know Black men rode horses!”
This is where Smith starts his artistic investigation, asking what is not seen. How is it that the Black man is not visible in so much of our country’s graphic history? Where are the positive and powerful images in our past advertisements, images that this artist would have seen when he was a small neighborhood boy growing up? What if the strong cowboy, the Marlboro Man, was a Black man?
Smith, a researcher and reader, looked into this very question. Where are African-American men depicted on horseback and in what context? The romantic western cowboy, the onward soldier, the jockey, or the gentleman hunter? This exhibition, titled Horse Power, is Smith’s ongoing inquiry of these missing symbols as he asks, “What if these depictions in mass visual culture had been available for role models?”
Born in 1970 in Philadelphia, Pa., Smith found art in a different location. From the start, he had talent with the pencil and paper. He drew a lot at his first job in a barber shop. A regular customer, artist William Tolliver, invited this young man to his studio, where Smith saw the life and career of a working artist, and decided to follow that path. Especially poignant is neither he nor Tolliver had formal art education.
