Steven B. Smith (poet)

Steven B. Smith
Born	1946 (age 70–71) Wallace, Idaho
Occupation	Artist, Poet, Publisher
Nationality	American

Steven B. Smith (born 1946 in Wallace, Idaho), is an underground artist and poet from Cleveland, Ohio. He published the cult underground classic ArtCrimes, a zine influenced by the beats. Smith's art and poetry uses cultural themes as found objects with a Dadaist influence.

His life is pockmarked with colorful episodes such as stealing cars when he was thirteen, getting kicked out of the U.S. Naval Academy, armed robbery, and prison.

Smith was born in Wallace, Idaho, to Pappy Smith and Florence E. "Mother Dwarf" Smith. He was raised in Paradise Prairie, twenty miles outside of Spokane, Washington. He stole thirteen cars when he was thirteen.

In 1968 Smith was one of thirteen middies ousted by the Naval Academy for smoking pot. He haggled a deal with the government upon discharge; they agreed to pay for his education. He went on to receive a bachelor's degree in English and philosophy with a 3.8 GPA from Loyola College in Maryland.

Smith married into an East Coast blue-blood family in 1969. In 1970, he was arrested for armed robbery. [1] Smith lived in Baltimore and other cities before coming to Cleveland in 1977 in pursuit of another man's wife. She then divorced her husband and decided to marry someone other than Smith.

Smith's art assemblages started when one day, instead of painting a key on a canvas, he picked it up and pasted it onto the canvas.

Smith's art uses iconic baubles with the effect of cheapening and attacking cultural themes. The work has been characterized as "difficult and uncompromising," and "repellent and grotesque," with roots from the dadaist collages of Schwitters and Rauschenberg.

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