The MARK LESly SMITH FLATBED PRESS COLLECTION

For four decades, Mark Lesly Smith, PhD has been a leader in the Texas visual arts community. In addition to working as a curator, art historian, professor, and arts administrator, Smith is also a noted visual artist. His magnum opus, The Hope Suite, is comprised of forty-four individual works of art and is part of the permanent collection of the Obama Presidential Center Museum scheduled to open in 2026 in Chicago. Smith earned a PhD in the history and criticism of art from the University of Texas at Austin, authoring a dissertation entitled Image and Word in the Prints of Robert Rauschenberg. He is a distinguished expert on the work of Robert Rauschenberg and has written scholarly texts on his printmaking. He is also the author of several books about twentieth century and contemporary American art including Flatbed Press at 25.

Smith cofounded the Austin-based Flatbed Press (now Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking) in 1989 and served as its Co-Director and Gallery Curator for nearly 25 years. From the beginning, Smith and Co-Founder Katherine Brimberry sought to make Flatbed Press a collaborative printshop with an ethos of creative experimentation. The duo took inspiration and cues from the models of Peregrine Press in Dallas, Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) in New York, Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, and Crown Point Press in the San Francisco Bay Area. During their partnership, Smith and Brimberry collaborated with a diverse array of compelling and noteworthy contemporary artists from all across America. Both having deep roots in the state of Texas, they always paid close attention to home-grown talent.

Flatbed Press printed works of art in collaboration with an impressive list of artists, including: John Alexander, Bale Allen, Sterling Allen, Terry Allen, Laura Berman, Keith Carter, Michael Ray Charles, Ann Conner, Sandra Fernandez, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Sandria Hu, Luis Jiménez, Sharon Kopriva, Lance Letscher, Melissa Miller, John Obuck, Lamar Peterson, Robert Rauschenberg, Linda Ridgway, Peter Saul, Lee Smith III, Julie Speed, James Sullivan, James Surls, Randy Twaddle, Bruce Lee Webb, Susan Weil, and Joan Winter. Prints produced at Flatbed Press have been collected by major museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Brooklyn Museum, all in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among other Texas institutions.

Smith has successfully served as board president of the Texas Fine Arts Association, Associate Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, Chair of the Department of Art at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and Professor at the Herron School of Art & Design in Indianapolis, Indiana. Over the years, Smith has amassed an outstanding collection of lithographs, woodcuts, etchings, gravures, and more, primarily composed of Flatbed Press archival impressions. Heidi Vaughan Fine Art is honored to offer a selection of prints from Smith’s personal collection.

University of Texas Press Q&A with Flatbed Press Co-Founders

Glasstire Article about Mark Lesly Smith by Bill Davenport