BART art: Owen Smith’s works are showing up at transit stations, Laguna Honda.
Owen Smith images depict famous Bay Area novels
If you’re an Aimee Mann fan, you may recall the heavily muscled boxers on the cover of her “Forgotten Arm” album, which won a Grammy for packaging, thanks to Smith’s memorable image. If you were drawn to Maureen Dowd’s book “Are Men Necessary?,” Smith’s sexy cover art no doubt helped. He has also illustrated three children’s books.
When Laguna Honda Hospital reopens later this year, Smith will have 11 mosaic murals in the new buildings and the lobby. Those in the residence buildings represent the four classical ele-
Even if you’ve never set foot in an art gallery or a museum, you may be familiar with Owen Smith’s work.
Smith is a local artist and illustrator whose work has been featured on the cover of the New Yorker (several times), in publications from Sports Illustrated to the Los Angeles Times, and up and down Market Street, for starters. If you’re from New York, you’ve likely seen his work in Brooklyn’s 36th Street subway station.
ments — earth, air, fire, water — embodied in human labor (a farmer, a pilot and like that).
Three sets of sculpture reliefs, one for each building, have the same subject matter. The mosaics in the lobby depict the building of the Golden Gate Bridge. Can’t wait to see them? The paintings on which three of the lobby murals are based are at the George Krevsky Gallery in San Francisco through June 30.
And speaking of books, three very cool posters, depicting people reading Jack London, Dashiell Hammett or Amy Tan on BART, are going up right now in 44 BART stations throughout the rail system. (The 19th Street Station in Oakland, for one, has all three posters.)
Recognizable work
If you remember Smith’s Market Street posters in 2008 — which featured characters from Hammett’s San Francisco-set masterwork, “The Maltese Falcon” — or saw any of his 18 New Yorker covers, almost all of which fronted a special fiction issue, you will instantly recognize his work.
Smith, who lives in Alameda with his wife and two sons, has clearly been influenced by a certain style of American art — think Edward Hopper, George Bellows, Thomas Hart Benton. Diego Rivera is an influence, as are the pulpfiction book jackets that Smith began collecting in art school. His illustrations also recall Works Progress Administration murals and proletarian artwork from an era when labor was seen as a worthy topic for art. This is why “I’m often asked to do retro subjects,” says Smith. “My work is always figurative but slightly stylized.”
Yes, and there’s a fun surreal aspect to the BART paintings. In each case, the image conflates reality (rider in a BART car) with the visions conjured by the novel being read. “The Joy Luck Club” is the most elusive: Glowing paper lanterns and two women, one in a lush red traditional jacket and golden headpiece, the other in drab Mao wear, fill so much space, it is not abundantly clear that the reader in her cushioned blue seat is on BART.
With its bright colors and sharp outlines, “The Maltese Falcon” is cheerfully noir, a painless punch to the eyeballs. As the tram passes John’s Grill, a man in a brown suit and fedora catches the eye of a babe clad in scarlet. No doubt distracted by the Maltese falcon he carries, the woman doesn’t notice the man in the next seat, peering at her over his newspaper. Illuminated by the car’s overhead lights, the scene includes the reader in her purple jacket and a map of the BART stops.
“The Call of the Wild” has a more subdued palette. Here, the tram is moving through a snowy mountain pass, with snowflakes falling indoors and out. Echoing the novel’s cover design, a lively team of huskies pulls a sled across the snow that covers the floor of the car.
Smith, 47, who grew up in Fremont, trained in commercial art (illustration) at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, graduating in 1989. (He has a twin brother who is also an artist.) In the early ’90s, he and his wife, Elizabeth Uyehara — she’s an illustrator, too — moved to New York, the mecca of graphic-design work, and stayed for three years.
Back to the bay
“I loved New York, but I didn’t want to be schlepping baby strollers up and down the subway stairs,” he says. “We came back about 15 years ago, bought a house and started having babies.”
These days, Smith teaches illustration at California College of the Arts in the city and has work available at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Artists Gallery, at Fort Mason. He is represented by La Luz de Jesus Gallery in L.A. and Sloan Fine Art in New York.
But Smith chose to work in illustration precisely because he likes its accessibility, whether in a magazine, a children’s book or a BART station. This kind of work “connects in a direct way with the general public,” he says. “It’s not a rarefied art.”