Title

Mosaic Mural

Artist

Smith, Gordon

Date

1965

Medium

glass

Type

tile mural

Owner

SFU Art Collection

Accession Number

NA

Location

Simon Fraser University

Category

SFU Art Collection

Collection

Public Art

Lat/Long

49.279161,-122.917386

View in Google Maps

http://www.google.com/maps?q=49.279161,-122.917386

Gordon Smith’s double Venetian tile mosaics, simply entitled Mosaic Mural, were SFU’s first art acquisitions. Each mural consists of approximately 90, 000 Venetian tiles, best viewed in the evening summer light. They face each other along the sides of the west Academic Quadrangle ‘portal’, across from the pond. This work is part of the Simon Fraser University Art Collection. The SFU Art Collection contains over 5,800 works. Approximately 1,000 works of art are shown throughout the campus and integrated in public, administrative and common learning spaces. A selection of the most accessible in this diverse repository are incorporated into the City of Burnaby Public Art Registry. For more extensive information about the holdings at SFU, visit: https://www.sfu.ca/galleries/Collections.html

Gordon Applebe Smith (1919- ) was born in Sussex, England and is a Canadian painter, printmaker, sculptor and teacher living in West Vancouver. Smith moved to Winnipeg from Sussex in 1933, where he studied at the Winnipeg School of Art. After serving as an intelligence officer in WWII, Smith moved to Vancouver to continue studying art and eventually become an instructor. Smith has been extremely active in the art community in Vancouver; in 1989 he co-founded Artists for Kids, an organization whose mission is to provide enriching art education for young people. Awards and Honours include First Prize at the Biennial of Canadian Art (1955), Senior Fellowship from the Canada Council (1960), an Honourary Doctorate from Simon Fraser University (1973), Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Allied Arts Medal (1980), Professor Emeritus from the University of British Columbia (1983), and an Honourary Doctorate from Emily Carr College of Art and Design (1995). Gordon Smith received the Governor General's Award for Visual Art in 2009, and has been appointed to both the Order of British Columbia and the Order of Canada.