For decades, Harold Smith has explored the complexities of Black masculinity in America through painting, collage, mixed media, video, and assemblage. He says, "I think media sometimes creates polarizing imagery of Black men. Either you are an Obama, or you are a thug. In my opinion, regular, hard-working, simple, Black men are an ignored group."

In his newest exhibition, Covers, Smith inserts his trademark faces, with their swirling depths of emotion, onto canvases of reimagined magazine covers such as Art in America, Ebony, and Jet. The idea of "cover" is also explored through several painted leather jackets and painted, found-object helmet sculptures. These illuminate the ways in which men may create protective armor. But Smith turns this notion inside out, making inner emotions visible on the outside of the garments with vibrant color, and embellishing the helmets with fragments of trinkets and toys. 

Smith has exhibited internationally, and locally at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. He is also a filmmaker, curator, and frequent contributor to KC Studio magazine.