Smith's works draw from Wyandotte as well as Pueblo traditions, incorporating coils and layers within the clay.
[1] Smith was born in 1955 in Augusta, Georgia and grew up in and near St. Louis, Missouri.
Smith specialized in ceramics when he attended the Kansas City Art Institute.
[3] Having gone into disuse in the 1960s, Smith began studying and teaching the language to Wyandotte people and descendants.
[4] In 1978, Smith traveled to Arizona where he worked as an art instructor at a Navajo mission school.