Gertrude Graham Smith, better known as Gay, settled in rural North Carolina, not far from the Penland School of Crafts, in the early 1990s. Smith was born to a privileged background in Philadelphia in 1953. Her father was an obstetrician/gynecologist who also taught the subject; her mother was a college graduate who in her later years was ordained an Episcopalian minister. Although Episcopalians are generally associated with upper or upper middle class WASP society, which is where I come from, they also have a very strong good works/service orientation, so there’s actually some pretty liberal, socially oriented Episcopalians out there. Her mother was the assistant priest at a church serving a poor African-American community in North Philadelphia.
Smith’s grandmother was very interested in antiques, loved beautiful objects and cared about them. There was traditional artwork. And all the special things would come out for Christmas dinner or for Thanksgiving. We’d have finger bowls between courses, all those kinds of things. When I left home, I thought I was walking away from all of those, but I find it all creeping back into my work now. I thought: oh, I’m just going to make really simple, wood-fired, brown pots. I sort of did for a while. I could go back to that because I really love form. That’s the bone structure.
Smith’s route to art opened in college. My grandfather went to Harvard, my father went to Harvard, my uncle went to Harvard, so I went to Harvard. When I was a freshman, I came back to my dorm room one day and there was a piece of paper on the bed advertising extracurricular activities, and one was a pottery class. It was being offered through the physical education department. [Laughter] I took that. It was a non-academic subject because there was no art department at Harvard.
Pottery was one of the first things that I met in my life that I couldn’t just pick up and do. Most of my learning was through books or conversation. But I couldn’t read a book and solve the pottery problem, so it became incredibly fascinating to me. I guess I’m the kind of person that likes a challenge. I think potters must generally like challenges because it’s not an easy medium. There’s always something to learn. I just got hooked by it.
[Laughter] Smith majored in English and American literature and language, because it
