Bryan Rindfuss
‘I Just Like to Make Work’
A peek inside the weird world of enigmatic San Antonio artist James Smolleck BY BRYAN RINDFUSS
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hile some artists are driven by the prospect of fame and fortune, others are simply driven by the need to create. San Antonio native James Smolleck easily falls into the latter category. “I always kind of knew I was going to be an artist,” Smolleck told the Current during a recent studio visit. His business-minded father teased him about his chosen career path by handing him the classifieds and asking, “You see any jobs for artists?” Undeterred, Smolleck stuck to his guns but found his way through the unexpected discipline of skateboarding. As a teen attending Churchill High School in the 1980s, he palled around with fellow skaters Aaron Curry and Erik Parker — both of whom went on to become renowned artists. “Around ’86, ’87, skateboarding was pretty underground,” Smolleck said. “So we kind of all found each other. … It was really formative. The graphics and just the whole idea of doing your own thing — that’s actually what got me more into making artwork: skateboarding.” Those strange bedfellows became further intertwined when Smolleck studied art at UTSA then 22
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purchased Zulu’s — a local skate shop he and his business partner renamed Goodtimes and operated until 1998. Nevertheless, he drifted away from skating as he started taking painting and drawing more seriously. A pivotal moment arrived when Curry, who was then studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, returned to the Alamo City and invited Smolleck to Blue Star to check out an exhibition of paintings by Peter Saul, a boundary-pushing artist known for his cartoonish aesthetic and biting social satires. “Seeing that show really got me [inspired] to paint,” Smolleck explained. While Saul emerged as a major influence on Smolleck’s early work, the UTSA community also played a key role in his artistic development. “Ken Little was one my first professors,” he said. “I had him for drawing. It was a really good experience. I had Connie Lowe for painting. … Dario Robleto was in one of my classes. … Hills Snyder was a graduate student. So, it was a real melting pot at that time.” During his senior year, Smolleck started shifting away from Saul’s poppy sensibilities, honing his painting skills and embracing the aesthetics of Flem-
Artist James Smolleck in his home studio with recent works including the 2021 drawing The Goblin Skapegoat.
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ish and Italian masters. “When I finished school, my dad asked me, ‘What are you gonna do now?’ And I was like, ‘I’m gonna do carpentry.’ He said, ‘What the fuck? I just paid for this school,’” Smolleck recounted. “I always knew I [would] have to find a way to make revenue, because there’s no way to [earn a living] just making artwork. … So, my wife’s father hooked me up working in a mill shop. … I worked for this contractor for a year — the worst year of my fucking life. But I learned a lot … and I was making a shit ton of artwork … it was just piling up in my studio.” Around that time, Smolleck ran into Ken Little at First Friday, and he scheduled a studio visit from his former professor. Little was so taken by the quality and volume of Smolleck’s work that he arranged a meeting with Chris Erck and Gabriela Trench of the influential Finesilver Gallery. “Gabriela just started selling [my work],” Smolleck said. “She was like, ‘Let’s find homes for all this stuff.’ And so that’s how I ended up working with Finesilver for a while.” Upon the birth of his daughter in 2006, Smolleck decided to take a break from creating work. “Having my daughter opened my eyes up to a lot more things,” he said. “[I stopped caring about] trying to do shows or what this person might think. When she was born, I was like, ‘I don’t give a shit about any of that stuff. She’s the coolest thing ever.
