STUDIO VISIT
   
  Christina Smith
 
  by Jennifer Cross Gans
   
   
 

Keeping a life in balance isn't easy, and for the studio artist it's a push-pull between dealing with the outside world and making time and space for creativity. California artist Christina Smith manages to do both, at the price of working a back-breaking schedule.
 

      During the day, the friendly and outgoing Smith is an assistant professor at California State University, Fullerton. After more than 20 years in the academic salt mines, she's now on the tenure track, teaching beginning crafts in addition to undergraduate and graduate level metaismithing.
      It's clear she is a versatile and dedicated teacher, helping her students through the basics, encouraging them to tackle big projects, and showing them many

Patsy Montana (named for the first woman country singer to sell one million records), who pursues her and plays with the fallen lemons. It is here that her private, interior world begins.      Her studio, a former garage, is neatly but tightly packed, and well-ventilated with a writhing mass of pleated silvery ducts overhead. There is a large guillotine, which she uses to cut and construct heavy paper models of big projects, such as teapots. These are then deconstructed, digitally photographed, and manipulated at the computer station across the room.
      Like most metalworkers, she is a tool-lover. In addition to the usual fabrication equipment, she has two rolling mills, a slip roller for cylinders and bracelets, and a Crystal Master lapping machine for flat-lapping hollow forms such as bracelets and teapot bottoms. She also has three lathes, one of which is new. 01 do everything on it!" says Smith-including making her own nuts and bolts for cold connections, particularly on her teapots. Self-taught in machining, she makes all the parts for her charm bracelets and the findings for her brooches, including a newly designed and ingenious locking pin-stem of which she's currently proud.
      Smith likes to work big. She opens a wide-drawer cabinet and lets me try on a few
Christina Smith, 2004
Photo: Eflis Gans

above right
The artist's Fullerton, California studio
Photo: Ellis Garis

 		of the shortcuts to excellence she's learned in her successful metals career. She is also working hard to expand her department, while cultivating the newly formed metals club and pursuing internships and jobs for qualified students.
      After work, she walks along a tree-lined Street to her snug home, lavishly decorated with paintings bought, given, or traded from students, friends, and colleagues. Her studio is at the rear of the small yard, shaded by large lemon and orange trees. She's greeted by the family dog,