“In Paste We Trust”: A Conversation with Winston Smith

by Cory W. Peeke and Nick “NickFRESH” Puzo

Winston Smith chose his name, a reference to the lead character in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, after returning to the United States from Italy in 1976. He had been gone for seven years and was struck by the profound social change that had taken place. While in Italy, the Oklahoma-native studied Renaissance art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and cinema at the International University of Art in Rome and for a few years was a roadie for an Italian jazz band. Back in the United States, he settled in San Francisco and teamed up with artist Jayed Scotti. The duo self-published a satirical fan-zine and made fake posters for bands that didn’t exist. A friend introduced Smith to Jello Biafra, the lead singer of punk rock band Dead Kennedys. The two started collaborating on album covers and poster art for the band. To date, Smith has designed over fifty covers and inserts for such acts as Green Day, Ben Harper, Burning Brides, and George Carlin.

Kolaj Magazine asked Cory Peeke & Nick “NickFRESH” Puzo to track down this prolific collage artist and ask him to reveal the secrets of his success, his approach to collage making, and the relationship between music and visual imagery.

PEEKE: You spent time studying art in Italy and have a strong classical training. How did you move from more traditional mediums like painting and drawing into collage?
SMITH: I’m blessed to have a minimal skill at drawing, but it takes everything in me to pull off what most other artists just do for fun. I’ve never taken for granted my artistic talents and hope to put them to their best use through creating collage compositions rather than to try to reinvent the wheel by the exclusive pursuit of painting or drawing…For me, collage is both a long and studious process of slow growing ideas, revealing themselves at glacial speed. Or, it can be like the sudden spark of a thunderclap that shakes you to your roots…It has helped me to have had a classical education because it gave me constant exposure to images of the past and images that have shaped our global viewpoints. But collage as a medium is something everyone could attempt with the same satisfaction as counting numbers or stringing words together in a sentence. We all have the same number of letters in the Roman alphabet as Shakespeare had to work with so in theory it’s only a matter of application.

I regard the medium of collage as a form of “instant surrealism”. It has great value for people who may never have suspected that they had creative ideas in their hearts or minds that could be expressed. It frees people from the tyranny of classical art training to experience that Eureka! moment that might otherwise require years of study and dedication to achieve.

To read the entire interview see more images of his work, purchase Issue Six or SUBSCRIBE to never miss an issue.

Image (top):
The All-Seeing Eye
by Winston Smith
2002
Image courtesy of the artist

Image (centre):
Kitchen Magic
by Winston Smith
Image courtesy of the artist