A worker of art: Prodigious output of ‘general practitioner’ found everywhere from hotel rooms to dashboards to clubs

Hidden Memphis series from The Commercial Appeal

Dec. 26, 2010

In a part of town once known for industry, manufacturing and commerce, that has seen difficult times over the past few decades, one man is an industry unto himself.

Nelson Smith III is well known in the North Memphis area known as New Chicago. “The Pied Piper” of the neighborhood, he calls himself, and his neighbors are welcome to use his studio’s phone, and in warmer weather, friends and characters will sit for a chat with the garage door flung wide.

A Memphis institution, as a drive around town over the years would attest, his work could be seen on signs and sculpture from Libertyland to Shoney’s restaurants to Holiday Inn and even Danny Owens’s adult entertainment clubs. He has been involved with industries as varied as service and automotive, the military and entertainment.

“I’ve been all over — California, New York and all of those places — but my home’s been here, and I’ve done all of my work here,” Smith said of his nearly 45-year career. “Artwork and sculpture, I’ve done thousands of pieces all over Memphis and around the country.”

His very studio, in fact, was the one-time Currie’s Club Tropicana, which saw acts such as Ray Charles, B.B. King, Little Junior Parker, Fats Domino, Isaac Hayes and “any black artist who was known at the time,” Smith said.

Little of that club is now recognizable, filled as it is with lumber, plaster, fiberglass, a Pontiac Firebird being remodeled little by little into a Ferrari, past works and new ones. However, the artistry is still mixed in with the mortar, falling like sawdust all around the floor … (read more)