Participant Biographies and Project Descriptions

Buddy Smith
Buddy has a B.A. in Fine Art and a teaching credential. He was inspired by his art classes and a teacher who showed him a small leaded glass window when he was in his junior year of college. Buddy learned about glass art from a library book. After six years of teaching art on Guam, Buddy decided to leave teaching and pursue a career as a professional artist. For the past 21 years, Buddy has operated Buddy Smith Glass Art Studio. Buddy recently became inspired again by mosaic sculpture and large scale public art.

Buddy is working with Youth of all ages at the Boys and Girls Club in Vista, California. This club serves a low income neighborhood with few after school opportunities for children and teens. He is teaching the basics of mosaic tile and sculpture in an after school program. He is also introducing advanced techniques, such as sculpting dimensional tiles. Buddy hopes to help young artists understand the process of how an individual can work in a group environment to come up with a completed project where the whole is more than the sum of its parts. To accomplish this, Buddy has obtained approval for the students to place a large scale work they create in a park near the Boys and Girls Club. He would like students to see “that they can do something they enjoy and that it could be something they develop into a rewarding career”.