Story & Lesson Highlights with Mel Smothers of Lake Tahoe

Mel Smothers shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Hi Mel, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re thrilled to learn more about your journey, values and what you are currently working on. Let’s start with an ice breaker: Have you stood up for someone when it cost you something?
This quarter I accepted a position as a Professor of Painting in the Art Department of local college
I was surprised to find that the students did not have a student gallery to display their work.
When I inquired about this oddity for an Art Dept, I was admonished for being divisive and not a team player in my new job, “Student work was wet and would mark up the walls.”
Administration a few weeks later announced there was a new student gallery. When one of my students was refused entry because she was late in submitting and would not have her work up with her classmates, I protested by withdrawing my own work for the upcoming faculty exhibition.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am a Adjunct Professor of Painting at Lake Tahoe Community College. My current work is “After Dorothea Lange,” almost 100 years ago, Dorothea Lange found inspiration away from her commercial salon in San Francisco. She was inspired by the figures in desperate California camps, in the fields and living in their cars alongside Highway 99. Like today, she also lived in politically divided
times in the last century. Her art was compelled by witnessing the class
division between her subjects and the privileged politicians and corporations,
who like today, discredit scientific and social evidence for their own personal
power and greed, resulting in environmental, climate and human disasters. My
paintings here pick up where Dorothea Lange’s photographs ended.
I am motivated by subjects
inherited from our times, drawn from personal narratives, and reflecting my
interest in philosophy, contemporary thought, and sources that span art history.
I have exhibits at Art Lives Here, and Carter-Burden Gallery, New York City. Hay Hill Gallery, London. TAG Gallery, Los Angeles. Bob Chew Gallery, Palm Desert.
In 2006 he was selected to ‘Artists of Year,’ exhibition at Cooper-Union, NYC. He has taught Art at the University of California, University of Idaho and University
of Nevada.
He has a hard-to-find studio along the shore in Lake Tahoe. He is also a student of fly fishing and jazz violin.

Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What part of you has served its purpose and must now be released?
For the first half of my mature life I was a seeker trying to find meaning and substance to life.
This half, I’m no longer trying to find myself in the material world. I’ve been living the life of what many would call an artist.

When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
When I gave up trying to find meaning in a material world. To do this, I had to give up material desires and self indulgence in superficial things, and become a student of world philosophy.

So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. Whom do you admire for their character, not their power?
Wayne Thiebaud.

Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What will you regret not doing? 
Nothing. It’s all been part of the journey that has brought me to a satisfying productive life in visual art and music.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://melsmothers.com
• Instagram: @andydialogs
• Facebook: Melsmothersartist
• Youtube: MelSmothers

Image Credits
Mel Smothers