GORD SMITH was born in Montreal on October 8, 1937, and passed away November 4, 2023 in Toronto. He studied Architecture and Engineering at Sir George Williams University, and went on to work with the architectural firm of Lawson Betts and Cash in Montreal from 1956 to 1958. In 1967, he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA). He was Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Arts of the University of Victoria from 1972 to 1975, and from 1993–94, he assumed a teaching role as Visiting Professor in the Department of Art and History at McMaster University, Hamilton.

 

Throughout his impressive career, Smith thrived on commissions and collaborations with architects Webb Zefara Menkes, Arthur Erickson, Bregman Hamman, Leslie Rebanks, Gene Kinoshita and other prominent firms, has worked with renown artists Sir Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, and was once the close friend and drummer for the legendary musician, Leonard Cohen.

 

A force in his own right, Gord continued creating art until the end of his life, even experiencing a creative renewal in his 80s that already saw him laying claim to a prominent place in the art-history archives of the present century as well as the last. His final body of work employed both his traditional media—metals (bronze, welded steel)—and a new medium of wooden dowels.

 

His design philosophy and humble disposition was best summed up in a statement made to Canadian Art Magazine at the outset of his career: “Everything—materials, texture, size, design and statement in a work of art—welds together to a point where there exists only the work  itself. It just happens. A work of art does not need interpretation. It does not matter who or what I am, it is the work that is important—it should be timeless and with a power of its own. If it speaks, it will be heard and what I say about it is not important.”

 

Work by Smith can be found in several prominent Canadian and international collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Art, Musée d'Art Contemporain Montreal, the Hamilton Art Gallery, Bell Canada corporate collection, and in the private collection of the Weston family, Sir Henry Moore, and Silvester Stallone, to name a few.