PROJECT ONWARD

Michael Smith b. 1984, Chicago, IL

Michael Smith is an artist with autism who also lives with mental illness and hearing impairment. As an apprentice artist in his teens at Gallery 37, Michael developed a unique personal style that appeared to draw upon fashion design and illustration techniques of the 1940's. Created with colored pencils and pastels, his signature compositions were orderly depictions of fancy dresses, elaborate ladies' hats, and stylized, doll-like faces. As he grew into adulthood and joined the artistic ranks of Project Onward, Michael's fashion-oriented drawings began to become more abstract. Figures once clearly defined began to blur under clouds of mark-making, their features and limbs barely suggested. The sense of mystery that his work evokes has only deepened with time, and Michael's drawings evoke questions as well as admiration. Who are the subjects of his work? Are we viewers seeing the same things that the artist sees? Michael describes his older work as "more finished"; his current body of work is, he says, "more advanced."