Skip to content
Features

HARRY SMITH

The O.G. for all aspiring curators/experimental filmmakers/found art collectors/misunderstood artists: Harry Smith did it all. His Anthology of American Folk Music, culled from his own hoarding of dusty 78s, brought the old weird America to the attention of new weird Americans like Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead. His hallucinogenic, Dizzy-Gillespie-tracked experimental animations predated the music video age by 30 years. His abstract art burst in geometric explosions. And, before his death in 1991, you could pop by his house and check out his collections of 30,000 Ukrainian Easter eggs, Seminole quilts, and paper airplanes he found floating in the New York City streets.

Avey Tare: I appreciate him because of his Renaissance Man quality. Just being into things like collecting the eggs, the film stuff, the musical compilations. It’s definitely awesome. He makes up stories and blends in things like Aleister Crowley and Jung and that kind of thing. He just seems like a really interesting individual to me.

Back to the Centipedia glossary

NEXT: Smoll Fat Child