Beau Smith's sculpture brings joy and allows people to reconnect with nature, whimsy, and innocence.
As you step into his workshop and watch the sculptor bend and weld copper, transforming raw metals into life giving animated Frogs, you realize you have stepped into another world, a world of enchantment, wonder, and fun.
Beau Smith grew up in a family of artists. His Grandmother was water color artist and his father became a sculptor after leaving the science profession. Both the grandmother and the father were professionals. Beau was eager to become an artist. As a teenager, he contributed art to an important exhibit collaborative exhibit with his father and grandmother.
Beau learned the art and craft of metal sculpting from his father. Beau's father originated the human-sized copper frog in the early '80s. Charles Smith, Beau's dad, also a Renaissance man, turned to sculptor mid-career in the early 70s. Before sculpting, Charles Smith was a scientist and mathematician. After much experiment in the realm of metal sculpture, Charles discovered the Frog.
As a kid, Beau's backyard in downtown, Charleston, South Carolina, was filled with metal sculpture, abstract, figurative, and whimsical - his father worked in many genres before settling on Frogs. "My backyard was like a bizarre Martian landscape, with Martians. All the wild sculptures…" Beau recalls.
In the early 80s, one of Charles's patrons suggested that Charles sculpt a frog. The implication, of course, was that if the patron liked the work, he would buy it. Like it, he did. And Charles did, too. He built more Frogs, most of them large. Every Frog he made, he sold. He had, in effect, stumbled onto a niche.
Though this was not the only reason making Frogs appealed to Charles, financial incentive is a strong one. As he continued to sculpt Frogs, his craftsmanship and artistry in making them grew. Son's Beau and Alexander watched the Frogs take off. They apprenticed during early periods of Frogmaking, and before.
Beau graduated from Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in film and illustration. Strangely enough, this background prepared him for the art he would later make, as the Frog sculptures have an animated quality.
Some years after Charles had been steadily making Frog after Frog, and selling them easily, his two sons, Beau and Alexander, hopped aboard and began making them as well. The Smiths then worked independently. Beau Smith had his studio in Atlanta area in Smyrna. Now he works at his studio in SC, near Charleston.
In the past the Smith had shows together. For several years in a row, the Smiths exhibited at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, where the gardens now has a permanent collection of Smith Frogs. The Smiths also exhibited at the New York's Wave Hill Gardens. The Smiths have called themselves "Frog Smiths". Many know their work collectively as "the Smith Frogs."
The Smith Frogs have received much attention and acclaim over the years. They reside in many public places across the US and abroad as well as in countless private collections. A children's museum in Honduras, funded by the World Bank, has fifteen Frogs. An elementary school near Wave Hill Gardens has a large permanent collection, as does the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. The prestigious gardens of Quebec's Les Quatre Vents have a large collection of Charles's Frogs. The work appears in, The Greater Perfection, a book about the gardens. The city of Smyrna has several of Beau's Frogs in its downtown area. The Clifton Park Half-Moon Library in Clifton Park, New York, bought and installed two of Beau's Frogs. This is to name but a few public installations.
The Frogs have been in commercials and advertisements. They are constant photo ops. Several of Beau's Frogs provided a backdrop for a performance by Travis Tritt at the 1995 Country Music Awards.
Some of the places you can see a Beau Smith Frog:
The Atlanta Botanical Gardens.
Downtown Smyrna, GA
Habersham Gardens in Atlanta …
Thrasher Park - Norcross
Half Moon Park Public Library - Clifton, N.Y.
Gold's Gym - Douglasville, Ga
Children's museum in Honduras - World Bank
Elementary School near New York State's Wave Hill Gardens
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