Michael Braceland Smith’s world is occupied in an 18-by-75-foot studio located in an East Patchogue strip mall. Gorgeous frame samples hang on a wall, then warrens stuffed with an art gallery, equipment, paint cans, brushes, and creations in progress spill out from every twist and turn, separated by hanging plastic panels to keep the dust down.
Ask him to flip on the switch of his industrial band saw in the 8-foot shop. (Then run for cover!)
He also uses a space by the door as a recording studio.
What?!
“I’m like seven different people,” admitted this East Patchogue artist, who is finishing up a high-end carpentry job, an intricate armoire, in Bay Shore.
He has been working in carpentry for 50 years and began integrating his art several years ago.
That would include his frames – gorgeous creations sourced from local woods and small lots.
“I have an electric bike with a trailer and go with clippers,” he explained, of his 5-mile sleuthing area. “I visit 20 different wood sites, including the former Gazzola Duck Farm in East Patchogue. I harvest branches I find on the ground. If I see a tree with qualities I want, I ask the owner’s permission to drop it and bring it home. I don’t go into New York State property.”
He also uses a sawmill company in Setauket that has wood on site.
Smith sure is energetic. A fit man, he walks 5-to-7 miles a day between his gallery work and woodland forays.
He showed us a landscape framed in mahogany, of ant-eaten wood in his 90-piece gallery hung on movable corkboard walls. Maple, spalted maple, aromatic cedar, oak, and mahogany are among the materials he favors.
Psychedelic Dog, a striking painting created by Jemma Jean, an artist whose dog had died, is framed in cork, painted cobalt blue, textured, and rimmed in purple heart wood.
We were sitting next to three short birch limbs.
“I love birch,” he said.
Smith brought out a couple of his framed works, including a painting of Jonathan Living Seagull. It stood out against a backdrop of smooth, white bark with horizontal lenticels or pores.
As for his own paintings, he is an abstract artist. There was his yellow creation, a swirling mass of colors.
“I have 80 gallons of paint. I take the colors, pour them, then manipulate the mixture, and it starts doing stuff,” he said. “I’m an abstract artist who can’t wait to do abstract all the time.”
That will happen after his carpentry job in Bay Shore ends in October, he said.
So, how did he start this journey?
“When I was 11 or 12, the lady across the street in Islandia, Mimi Jacobs, was a craftsperson. She had a large picnic table full of crafts, and my sister and I would go there and learn from her.”
He showed a photo of himself as a youngster creating an abstract scene.
“I was very into optical illusions and line drawing with a pen during the ’60s, when I was in grade school.”
He went to work with his dad, a TWA pilot, and started flying to places in the U.S. when he was 13, then would return home with him. That introduced him to old and new architecture, seeing other people and places, eventually visiting friends at their colleges staying in their dorms.
He remembers picking up a hammer at 21 and liking the feel. He was fired from his first construction job, building homes in Florida, and then returned north, working for a burnout company before joining a yacht company in Huntington. He segued into high-end carpentry.
Smith has had quite a life so far and intends to keep it vibrant.
He raised five kids as a single dad and owned a successful yoga company with his son for five years in Patchogue, on Maple Avenue, where they made dharma wheels and 30 other yoga products. He plays guitar with the local band, Twig Breaks Before Stepping, at yoga classes and has performed at the Patchogue Family YMCA.
“I make CDs for yoga classes and have performed live music to 400 of them,” he said of the sound studio.
Always thinking of his next project, it might be chakra swirls that accompany the Ganesha piece he made, or transforming the miniature animals and soldiers purchased at Savers Thrift Store with paint, then placing them on a wheel walkway.
“I’m trying to do something original and want to be an artist until my dying day.”
