Based in Elmira, New York, artist, designer, and educator Tyler K. Smith creates works featuring creatures who inhabit his imaginative BOMBOTZ universe, a place where science fiction-inspired machines and fantastical creatures reign supreme. With robotic bodies bursting open to reveal organic internal organs, the creatures of Smith’s universe are a signature mashup of machine and monster.
Smith draws inspiration from the cartoons, trading cards, and comic books he enjoyed as a child of 1960s pop culture. He also grew up surrounded by farm equipment and the devices that his ophthalmologist father used to examine and treat his patients. Smith echoes renegade artists of the era like the Hairy Who and the ceramic artists of the Funk movement, gleefully drawing upon art forms previously viewed as “lowbrow:” underground comics, the hot rod art of Robert Williams and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, and the sci-fi artists like H.R. Giger and Moebius.
Smith’s inspirations are filtered through his fevered imagination, resulting in a world of his own creation where organic spaceships with biological features collide with quasi-mechanical monsters and sentient machines. The resulting drawings, paintings, and sculptures comprise a universe that serves as a window into Smith’s distinctive vision.
BEEBOTZ SWARM, 2018
Acrylic on luan, 48 x 30 inches
DICBOTZ PULLS, 2020
Painted polyclay, 11 x 12 x 5 inches
The Everson is supported by the Dorothy and Marshall M. Reisman Foundation; the General Operating Support program, a regrant program of the County of Onondaga with the support of County Executive, J. Ryan McMahon II, and the Onondaga County Legislature, administered by CNY Arts; and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
About the Artist:
Tyler K. Smith is a sculptor, illustrator, set designer, and educator. After receiving his BFA from Syracuse University, his MFA from Indiana University, and attending Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture on a Ford Foundation grant, he taught sculpture in Cortona, Italy, with the University of Georgia Study Abroad Program. Upon moving to Hoboken, New Jersey, Smith received a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. While showing at 55 Mercer Street Gallery in New York, he began a freelance career in theater and film as an illustrator, art director, set designer, and special effects artist. His teaching, lecturing, and exhibition credits include Rhode Island School of Design, Miami International University, Nova Southwestern University, Broward College, and Corning Community College. Smith currently works from his studio in Elmira, New York.
