The Hope Suite

On display May 25 - December 23, 2022

Mark Smith was inspired to create the forty-four works of The Hope Suite in 2008, when that year’s forty-fourth U. S. presidential election revived his hope for our country. However, the artist soon broadened his theme beyond that of any particular presidency or any specific country. Art is a universal language that can build bridges between the diverse cultures of the world. That theme of global unity is what The Hope Suite is all about.

Smith created the first twenty works in Austin, Texas in the studios of Flatbed Press, which he had co-founded with Katherine Brimberry in 1989, and co-directed until 2012. The artist made the remaining twenty-four works in his studios in Indianapolis, Indiana, finishing them in 2014. In 2019, the entire suite became part of the permanent collection of the Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago, Illinois. The works in this exhibition are limited-edition prints of those originals.

Each original 24 x 18 in. work on paper consists of a background monoprint or a digital photoprint, overlaid with collage, calligraphy, and mixed media. After choosing the forty-four languages—a few of which, like Braille, are non-linguistic—Smith matched their cultures—aesthetically--with his backgrounds, then added the collage and the unique linguistic calligraphy. The collage elements are purposely irrelevant to the cultures, and were selected on their artistic merits, alone. In that sense, they represent the unification of diversity. In his collages, Smith uses a witty variety of urban detritus, a style he has described as “the redemption of rubbish.”

Using the timeless and unbounded power of art, Mark Smith has—with his Hope Suite—made his own small contribution to the ongoing effort to bring us all together. 

Hope After Dark - A large-scale projection of “The Hope Suite” at the LBJ Presidential Library in conjunction with the Neill-Cochran House Museum (September 22, 2022)

About the artist

Mark Smith is a visual artist with a varied career that has included fine arts administration and teaching at Southwestern University, University of Texas at Austin, and Herron School of Art & Design at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis. 

He co-founded Flatbed Press, in Austin, Texas, and co-authored Flatbed Press at 25, published by University of Texas Press in 2016, and is the author of several other books about 20th century and contemporary American art.

He is a native of the Texas Red River Valley and is a student of the collision of Southern and Western cultures that characterizes that region.

A scholar of the American artist, Robert Rauschenberg, he currently divides his time between studio work, and the writing of a novela, and a memoir tracing the profound influence of Rauschenberg on the author’s life and art.