The Washington Post

A Touch of the Unforeseen

In its 23rd annual group show, the Mickelson Gallery is trotting out something for everyone - what sells, what would work on a particular wall over the sofa, the typical landscapes, the seascapes and the mantelpiece-size bronzes. But a few of the artists here introduce an element of the unexpected.
The enameled bronze sculptures by Joseph Smith - partial views of people inside an architectural form of some sort - are among the best in the show and would work least well in the living room. "The Tower" is Kafkaesque - a menacing man in a business suit in the window of a tall column. A woman is either prisoner or princess in "The Attic." She looks out a window in a pediment that is made to hang on the wall. The shape is entirely house-like, but when you get to the bottom of it, the graying white paint wears thin, becomes cloudy, then disappears into the bronze base. It's a very effective illusion.

The Middletown Press

New Sculpture In New Garden

Cavalier Galleries in Stamford has taken advantage of a below the street level space at One Landmark Square to create an out-of-doors sculpture garden. Most of the works in the garden more or less suggest something which has gone before. One asks "Where have I seen you before."
The two pieces by Joseph Smith are not eligible for this quiz because they are not like any other pieces of sculpture. Smith plays well with the fantastic, the conjunction of the recognizable in a totally improbable environment. He is not a Surrealist but there is a kinship in his work with the Surrealism of someone like Magritte. His work doesn't in any way look like that of Magritte but each artist improbably makes the plausible exist in the world of the improbable.

"The Tower," one of Smith's pieces, consists of a slender and delicately painted long, vertical tube of bronze with a hole, about the size of the palm of your hand cut in it. A small carefully modeled human head is seen protruding through the hole. The figure looks fixedly into the distance, within the tube, that is, and ignores the outside world. Implausible, improbable, but clearly there.
"East," again by Smith, is a more complex work. The viewer sees what appears to be an antique gray-white marble grave stone, a stele. The stele is decorated with small classical ornaments and there appears to be a piece of fabric or a splinter piece of wood penetrating it from side to side. But illusion is the keynote here; the work piece is not stone or fabric or wood but painted bronze. We are deceived from the beginning; craft and art conceal physical reality. On one side a relatively small lozenge shaped opening about a quarter of the way from the base of the work contains a very finely rendered human head surrounded by swirling drapery. The head is of dark bronze, the drapery painted a light gray or white. The expression of the face suggests an intensely emotional inner state. The combination of elements, visual as well as intellectual and emotional, all suggest more than meets the eye. It is a work of art which moves the spectator out of the immediate and particular into a larger world with fewer boundaries.

The Stamford Times

Innovative Sculpture

"Resting With Stones," an onyx figure by artist Joseph Smith is one of the most intriguing pieces currently on exhibit at the Cavalier Galleries through December.
Cavalier recently announced the opening of an exhibit of two outstanding Connecticut sculptors, Joseph Smith and Karen Peterson.
Best known for his realistic, mysterious images, Smith has recently changed his style to abstracted, rounded figures in bronze and onyx, blending with the massive bronzes of Peterson.
Both Smith and Peterson have exhibited widely: Smith in many major U.S. cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Peterson in many corporate and private collections throughout Europe, Canada and New England.