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Artist, M.D.by April Sutton 
Dr. Joe Smith and one of his sculptures Dr. Joe Smith's first love has always been medicine, but in the closing days of World War II he also discovered a passion for the visual arts. Smith, a U.S. Marine, was sent to China where he was in charge of repatriating Japanese civilians back to Sasebo, Japan. As he left for the United States in February 1946, he was presented with a fold-up Japanese camera that was "sharp as a tack." "It made me just fall in love with photography," said Smith, a class of 1951 Baylor College of Medicine graduate. Smith soon crafted a rolling photograph enlarger, turned his bathroom into a makeshift darkroom, and joined the Photographic Society of America. In 1964 he won a gold medal at a national contest for a photo he took in Austin with a small Minox spy camera. The award-winning 20 x 24 photograph captured an airplane flying right below the sun. Over the years, Smith also has tinkered with making jewelry and painting, but today he enjoys most creating life-sized and larger scrap metal sculptures. "All that I do now is sculpting, I enjoy going into my studio and spending two to three hours a day working," said Smith, now age 85. Walking around Smith's 2.5-acre yard and through his house in Caldwell—the "Kolache Capital of Texas"—is like walking through a museum. He has more than 80 exquisite handmade metal, wood and stone sculptures planted in his yard. When pulling into Smith's driveway you can't miss the massive yellow figure Mother Earth, which envisions Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture and earth fertility. The most impressive piece is a ball of steel bars called Chaos to Chaos which captures his vision of Nobel-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. He also has 18 pieces displayed in College Station and a colorful metal structure outside of McDonald's Restaurant in Caldwell, which is in the College Station-Bryan metro area. Each piece of work is tagged with his pseudonym, J. Lyle. The initial is for his first name and the Lyle is from his middle name, Carlyle. "I hung several pieces of my artwork in my office, and I didn't want anyone to know that I'd done them," Smith said. "I wanted their honest opinions and I knew that if they knew I was the artist, they would never be honest." Not only is Smith known around town for his art, but also for the care that he provided his patients for more than 30 years. Smith and his wife, Mollie Dee, moved their family to Caldwell in 1953. They have three daughters, Lynn, Susan and, Gayl, and a son, Joe Griffis, who inherited his father's artistic talent. "When I first came here they didn't even have a hospital," he said. "A classmate of mine from Baylor, George Railsback Jr., came out here with me and we built a well-equipped 16-bed hospital." For 15 years Smith worked as the town's only family practitioner. Since retiring in 1987, Smith has had a lot more time to pursue art. "I don't miss the long hours or the late night phone calls," Smith said. "I miss the people, but I was as happy as a hog on ice to retire. I have so much sculpting still to do." |
Patient CareResearchTrekking Into New Territory: Translational Biology and Molecular Medicine Closing the Gap Between Lab and Clinic EducationTulane's Journey Back to New Orleans Community ServiceAlumni & DevelopmentCollege News
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Volume 2, Issue 2, Summer 2006 |
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