When a person leaves for college, it’s often said they’ll inevitably end up back home no matter what. For Rob Carpenter and David Scott Smith, this notion applies to leaving Baton Rouge and returning home.
The two University alumni will be featured as the newest artists of the Baton Rouge Gallery in the upcoming months. Both artists exemplify the older and newer end of graduate work.
Carpenter enrolled in the University to receive his master’s degree in Fine Arts. After switching from a focus in printmaking to painting and drawing, he graduated in 1977. He began teaching at Nicholls State University before moving to New York, then Arizona. In the ‘90s, Carpenter returned to Baton Rouge and taught more at Nicholls.
After his graduation from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, Smith pursued an independent business making ceramics for a decade. He then enrolled in the University to achieve his MFA with an emphasis in ceramics, graduating in 2005. After graduate school, Smith stayed in Baton Rouge because of his work’s popularity both here and in New Orleans. For Smith, more education equaled better art.
“LSU was more of an opportunity to get better and … take it up a notch,” Smith said. “There’s a billion lawyers out there, but there’s only a few … that are really good. I kind of want to be in the better category.”
Aside from their age difference, Carpenter and Smith’s works show a strong differentiation in both style and medium. Carpenter’s pieces are large arrangements of multicolored ink lines, running over and through each other to create a screen-like grid effect. Smith creates detailed ceramic works in the forms of sconces, guitars and jugs. He draws inspiration from French Renaissance craftsman Bernard Palissy and Robert Arneson of California.
 As an influence, Carpenter cites a combination of his professors while at the University, the minimalist artist Agnes Martin, Renaissance artists and pop artist Roy Lichtenstein.
 “I guess the art term for it…would be ‘post-minimalist nonobjective art,’” Carpenter said. “It’s really quite a contrast to the kind of work that I’ve done up until five years ago.”
Not only is his art freehand, but Carpenter also uses special drafting pens that are no longer available. This method means his entire medium hangs in the balance with the utility of the pens. Therefore, Carpenter is sure to take care of his tools, attentively filling them with ink whenever needed.
Smith’s pieces, especially his works made with translucent porcelain, depict wildlife illuminated by a backlight. With a taxidermist for a father, Smith has access to various forms of animals he can use to mold and shape his art.
 “The older I get, I’m really concerned with environmental issues,” Smith said. “Things have changed so much in my lifetime that I think you have to be a real moron not to realize that the world is changing and we’re the cause of it.”
 Carpenter’s art is made meticulously by hand, a quality Carpenter said he enjoys. The long process of drawing and concentrating on spacing allows his work to flow easily without thought or concern for the outside world. For Carpenter, the method and its calming effect is what he hopes to deliver in his art.
“I find it very meditative,” Carpenter said. “I can sit in [my studio] for hours…because it’s a very repetitive process. I like to think that the effect it has on me making it is somehow conveyed to the viewer. It is a kind of contemplative expression.”
Other artists being featured in the exhibitions are Carpenter and Smith’s friends of the Baton Rouge art world. This closeness with the glamour of a premiere exhibition of new work excites the incoming artists. Smith currently teaches at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. While living in Baton Rouge, he said he was a frequent visitor of Baton Rouge Gallery. He sees his upcoming exhibit as “a homecoming.”
Baton Rouge Gallery will exhibit Carpenter’s works in its halls from Sunday, May 3, to Thursday, May 28. Smith’s art will hang from Tuesday, June 2, to Thursday, June 25.

Gallery • 2 Photos

Raegan Labat

Artist and LSU alumnus Rob Carpenter will have work featured May 3 until May 28 in Baton Rouge Gallery.