PHIL DEMISE SMITH

I am an artist, musician, poet and owner of A Gallery @ Wares For Art.  I represent and curate shows for individual artists including Ross Brodar, Gerard Sendrey, Charles Lassiter, Hans Verschoor and the artists of Olof Gallery (Netherlands), Galerie Herenplaats (Netherlands) and Pure Vision Arts (New York). I am, myself, a self-taught artist and musician who has had numerous shows and performances both in the U.S. and Europe and I’m a published poet (Periods, selected writings 1972-1987). I am an avid collector of American and European Outsider and primitive expressionistic art.

In the 1970’s I began developing my own style in music and poetry. During the new wave/performance art scene in New York, I opened a performance loft, which featured collaborative performances by poets, musicians and artists. The space was called The Gegenschein Vaudeville Placenter. The performance space was a natural extension of the poetry/art magazine I had been publishing since 1972, The Gegenschein Quarterly. During this time I created an art rock/new wave band called the N. DoDo Band. At this time in New York City, many artists, poets and musicians were joining forces and forming bands that combined many art disciplines and degrees of musical training. Since then I have written, recorded and performed over 200 songs.

I have always been involved in organizing and producing events that showcased my own aesthetic in the arts, whether it is in the form of a magazine or of a performance. I began painting in 1987 because I felt a need to do it as part of what I have called my Uni Verse, the one poem that I’m creating – which is my life. After having experienced Dada and Surrealist art and poetry, I followed this path to Gertrude Stein, Picasso, the Fauves, German Expressionists, Dubuffet, CoBrA, American Folk art, Art Brut, Neuve Invention and finally to Outsider Art. These styles of art were all discovered in retrospect as my own natural style emerged.

And then, once again, in 1995, I organized events, this time around my art. It took the form of a Gallery in Greenwich Village known as A Gallery @Wares For Art. In this gallery/shop I featured outsider/self taught art and crafts. The Gallery moved to Soho a few years later as I continued my own art while promoting and curating shows of art of American and European artists. Many of these artists I discovered and many were established Outsider artists. The Gallery closed its physical space sometime around 2000 but still is “virtually” alive and remains tangibly alive through the many curatorial events I have continued to produce and co-produce.

In 1999 I began teaching and developing an art and poetry curriculum called EXPRESSION which I taught for 16 years in a number of NYC elementary schools including P.S. 41, The Greenwich Village School. In 2015/16 I was the studio coordinator at Pure Vision Arts, a studio for developmentally challenged adults.

I have participated in over 50 group and one person shows of my own art, which included my 2009 participation in the annual Dissidente show at the Musée Création Franche in Bégles, France which culminated, in April 2012, in a personal exhibition of 65 works at the Musée Création Franche.