These are the images from Mark T Smith's exhibition at Frederick Holmes and Company in Seattle. The show opens on Thursday June 5th, 2014 and is on exhibit through the summer.

3. Mark T Smith
Secret Societies
June 2014

4. All works for this exhibition were created in Miami in 2014 and
are the first series to be exhibited since 2010 by artist Mark T Smith.
Four years between exhibitions is an unusually long time for this
extremely in-demand, internationally exhibited artist. After a solo
exhibition in 2010 and a traumatic personal event, the artist made the
decision to spend some time being introspective about life and his life’s
work. The artist spent most of 2010-2012, teaching, curating various
exhibitions, executing a number of private and corporate commissions;
all while archiving his older works from 1990-2010 and continuing his
love of drawing from the figure.
This time period was a return to the basics and an opportunity to
review the work in a new, more mature and sophisticated context. In
fact, some of the canvas and paper used for this exhibition are
repainted works from earlier periods, scraps, old drawings, and pieces
of larger works.
This transformation has been happening in the context of the world
becoming truly global for the first time in a simultaneous experience.
The continued development in the global technology businesses; the
reduced scope of global American influence; the slow wind down of
the American Democracy through citizen apathy and diminished
engagement; and an Art World ruled by financial speculation and Art
as “commodity”.

5. While anyone who knows Mark T Smith, most likely knows him has a
relentless optimist, a real-world problem solver, this show might
reveal a serious, more mature side of the artist. The concepts for
the works in this show were combined with a graphic style of work
that has drawn influences from the “street art” movement; his
experiences in New York, Miami, Rio, and his other global travels; the
prevalence of tattoos as personal artistic statements; the artist’s
visual language and personal experiences.
Artists have long been observers of their times, through visual
metaphor commenting on injustice; social issues; evolving political,
religious, technological, or economic values; and other human
concerns – through the creation of work intellectually compelling
while equally emotional and aesthetic.
This, more than anything, has been for centuries what distinguished
important work as abiding and indelibly relevant to today’s
collector as well as generations yet to come.
“Secret Societies” is the artist’s first exhibition in Seattle
and the Pacific Northwest.

6. A Brief History of Global Domination
/ 48x60 inches /
Mixed media on canvas / 2013
This piece is a reaction to the
current state of affairs in
the United States of America.
The composition is a twisted
collection of toxic
components – a bottle of
booze being constricted by a
skull-headed cobra, a drone
gathering information and
filling a low ball tumbler
with its toxic content with an
internal combustion engine
symbolized by the V8 (with
gasser pipes) powering the
whole operation. The absurd
contraption is self powered
by the tears of the skull/
cobra deity.

7. Apathy is the Enemy / 48x60 inches /
Mixed media on canvas / 2013
The events that inspired this expression
were the myriad of public shootings in the
United States last year, the mindless
reporting on the events, the mock outrage
of the citizenry – “trauma events” in news
parlance, grade schools, malls, stores,
military bases, the list
of barbarous targeted acts goes on and on.
Nothing done. Nothing. I bore witness to the
first wave of this cultural shift – my first
solo show was in Washington DC in 1993.
Titled - “Urban Violence, coming to a Suburb
near you”. Very Special Arts was the
charitable organization that backed and
benefited from the show. This the event that
captured the nation’s zeitgeist - http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcyyCi2b2AY
and http://www.marktsmith.com/press/
through-the-eyes-of-artists/ . These
happened on the same day.
The same hollowing of the inner cities and
the replacement of a vibrant culture build
on co-existence with a violent, dependent
one with a permanent short term outlook.
The unsolved structural decay has spread
to the rural and post industrial areas of
the country. As the wealth is concentrated
into the hands of a few, the replacement
culture is the wasteland of apathy.
“Absence suppression of passion, emotion,
or excitement, lack of interest in or
concern for things that others find
moving or exciting”. Webster. What else
can explain the current state of affairs. I
see lots of people out in the world doing
great and generous things for their
fellow human beings. Pure, selfless acts.
These actions should inspire, create a call
to action, motivate. But theirs is the same
path of the lonely monk that worked to
save the goodness, the light and the
intellectual achievements of humankind.
Thankless, forgotten. The number of
enlightened or even socially functional
humans seems to be eclipsed many times
over by the foolish, the hopeless, the
arrogant, the selfish, the delusional, but
in this list of the virtueless bows it head in
subservience to the power of the mob –
the apathetic. The largest majority just
does not care. The excuses run the gamut,
but in the end, they are just excuses.

8. Wrath / Mixed Media / 48x60 inches /
Mixed Media on Canvas / 2013
“Popular discontent with the
drone program has built slowly as
drone missions grew from 50
strikes under President George W.
Bush to more than 400 under
President Obama, and it dawned on
Americans that remote-controlled
killing had become a permanent
fixture of national policy.” – The
New York Times, Editorial Board,
April 7, 2013
“As the President of the United
States gave his outraged speech
on children’s deaths, he
simultaneously moved to shield
from transparency the targeted
drone assassination program he
has built up and nurtured — which
has, during his time in office, killed
more noncombatants than have all
U.S. mass shootings during the
same period. This fact, rarely
brought up in the gun debate,
provides some needed context for
media coverage of all the political
outrage.” – David Freddoso, The
Examiner. April 18, 2013.

9. “Charisma” / 2009 / cast Parian, 37”h
29”w 1.5”d, Edition of: 26 Sculptures (A-
Z), 5 Artist Proofs and 4
collaborator’s Proofs.
This sculpture is an editioned piece
created by Mark T Smith and his one of
his first sculptures. The process to
create this artwork started with a
maquette at 100% of the scale of this
final editioned piece. This maquette
was cast in a foundry and that mold
begot the result you see here in this
installation. The horse is an icon that
the artist works with often. The piece
is cast in crushed marble.
“Sculpture is the final frontier for a
painter and draftsman – finally to
reach out into the world. The newness
of the experience is intoxicating, the
challenges exciting and fresh. The
first baby-steps into this world
return me to the feeling that I had as a
very young child making art. I am
approaching this new expression with a
renewed love of the creative process,
the tabula rasa of a wise child and
have fallen in love again with Arts’
seductive forces” - Mark T Smith

10. Phobia / 22x30 inches / Mixed media on paper / 2014
Phobia. What are you
afraid of.... Do you
confront these fears
head on or do you avoid
the confrontation? In this
piece the viewer
confronts a open coffin
filled with a large cobra
with a skull for a head.
Death, Poison, Lies,
Snakes, Loss of Control,
the Supernatural. This is a
representation of the
opening of your personal
pandora’s box of fear.

11. Private Empire / 22x30 inches / Mixed
media on paper / 2014
Private Empire. This
painting deals with the
privatization of the
American empire. Maybe
the American dream was
privatized long ago. Is it a
so called righteous war,
or a healthcare plan, or a
safe way to buy a house or
is it a research and
development lab for the
companies that lead the
charge, financially
controlling the political
class, running the world
from behind glass desks.
Blackwater, Solyndra are
the minor leagues, the
larger forces move with
no impunity - quietly giving
over your private files,
emails, pictures, outright
selling your data to the
highest bidder.

12. 322 / 19x24 inches / Mixed media on paper / 2014
The anointed ones. The private clubs, the private bankers, the private opportunities, the insider trader. The kings and the king-
makers. All cut from the same cloth, all educated the same way, all interlocked, intermarried, slicing the pie into smaller and
smaller slivers. We go to the same well again and again expecting a different result. The blame rests squarely with ourselves.
This piece is a layered work, two drawings overlaid, the top piece is created on a translucent vellum and the piece below on
archival bristol. The artist likes this techinique, it has the feel of inperminent and temporal soul to it. It favors process over
product and captures the chaos and the victory of the moment in the studio.

14. AR 15 Eagle / 22x30 inches / Mixed media on paper / 2014

15. AR 15 / 22x30 inches / Mixed media on paper / 2014

16. Clandestine / 22x30 inches / Mixed
media on paper / 2014
Clandestine. As the break down of the Fourth Estate continues unabated, coupled with the rise of an apathetic
general population, it leaves only the fringe players to contest the field of battle. Long forgotten is the big
idea, the greater good, the long term. Technology marches forward relentlessly . This painting is about the
start of the rise of the machines, the first class to graduate from the Air Force Academy has been graduating
unmanned vehicle pilots for several years. This painting is about the first mechanized icon of the 21st century -
the drone 1.0

17. Honk Tonk Super Hooch 2014 / 22 x 30
inches / Mixed media on paper / 2014
This is a combination of many icons from the artist’s personal language. The bottle was inspired by
a mural that the artist created in the 1990’s in the back room of a fine drinking establishment in
Philadelphia. That mural was part of a series of works that lead in part to the Absolut Smith Vodka
promotion in 1996. This piece combines that older iconography with the newest trends emerging in
this Secret Societies exhibition.

18. The Rise of the Machines / 22x30 inches / Mixed Media / 2013

19. First Draft of History of Global Domination / 22x30 inches /
Mixed media on paper / 2014

20. Studio Shots show in process
2013/14

23. Linoleum Block Carving for
Secret Societies 2014

24. Studio Shot / Printing in process

26. Linoleum Block Print Remarques. / Printed on a variety of
papers, some archival, some not. This suite of prints is some
of the most relaxed, non dogmatic approach to the genre
that the artist has attempted thus far in his career / Sizes
and Materials vary.

27. FIN