Meet the Sculptor
Andrew Wilson Smith grew up in the South Bend area and was immersed in art and architecture from a young age.
After high school, Smith attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and the Florence Academy of Fine Art, but his most formative artistic experiences happened during his apprenticeships with established sculptors, such as Alexander Stoddart, Miklos Simon, and Anthony Visco. In 2022, Smith relocated AWS Sculpture Studio to South Bend, Indiana.
Smith’s ambition is to breathe new life into aesthetic models from the past in order to respond to the particular needs of his patrons in the present day. He achieves this by imbuing naturalistic art with symbolic meaning.
By unifying concept and representation, Smith’s work communicates on a symbolic level while engaging the viewer's attraction to beauty and mimetic display.
In addition to creating fine art, Smith has extensive experience teaching art at the college and high school levels. He was a founding instructor at Gregory the Great Academy and has also taught at Wyoming Catholic College and St. Thomas More Academy.
In his studio, Smith teaches using the apprenticeship model, continuing an ancient tradition of passing on knowledge from one generation to the next.
Smith accepts apprentices on a case-by-case basis.