An accumulation of experiences

About An accumulation of experiences

Inspired by life’s big questions, Roch Smith creates thoughtful and playful contemporary sculptures. This figure cast in bronze and dressed formally in a three-piece suit stands on a podium, a series of increasingly smaller anvils stacked on his back. Smith often thinks about the ‘things we carry in terms of either memory or actual objects that we live with.’ When viewing this outdoor sculpture, the popular expression ‘carrying the weight of the world upon your shoulders’ comes to mind. Smith sees this idea in a positive light.

“The decreasing scale of the anvils, while visually pleasing, also might give rise to the idea that there is a suitable scale to what we have in our minds - that there are smaller and larger things to ponder simultaneously and that we are OK.” Roch Smith

Roch Smith received a BFA (Honours Sculpture) from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (ECIAD - 1997) and an MFA from York University (2003). A teacher as well as an artist, he has taught classes at the University of Waterloo, ECIAD and York University. He currently manages and operates the bronze and aluminum foundry at York University. Roch Smith has exhibited throughout Canada and in the US. His work is included in private, corporate and museum collections.