Hope Suite Collection

Mark Lesly Smith, PhD is a native Texan whose long art career spans academia and studio art. A scholar of American artist Rauschenberg’s deluxe artist’s books, and co-founder of printmaking legend Flatbed Press in Austin, Smith—a Member of the Austin Arts Hall of Fame—now lives and works in the Hill Country, where he concentrates on his own mixed-media art and writing. A former seminary student, Smith has retained his interest in theology, especially ancient mystical traditions. His Hope Suite—a masterwork involving forty-four languages for the word “hope”—is his small way of bridging diverse cultures.