Nate Smith (Media Arts 2011) “I’m grateful to Perpich for giving me space to grow.”

Nate Smith (Media Arts 2011)

May 25, 2023

Perpich alum, Nate Smith (Media Arts 2011), is an award-winning wedding photographer based in Minneapolis, MN. After picking up his first camera in high school, he continued on to study photography at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and holds a BFA in Photography from the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

“After attending Perpich, I went on to two art colleges and it really wasn’t until I did that I realized how much Perpich has to offer young artists,” said Smith. “In my experience, higher art education is taught primarily through criticism. First learning how to be critical of work, and then applying that lens to think through the ways that future work might be perceived. While criticism has its place, it should ultimately be secondary to creating something in the first place. When there’s too much criticism it’s hard to make any authentic work because the focus is always on what shouldn’t happen and you can’t create by not doing something. Art criticism is a shaping tool but it isn’t generative.

What Perpich does so well is to create an environment where students feel safe and inspired enough to create without fear, and explore what’s meaningful to them without thinking first about what others might say about it. You have to let trees start growing before you can prune them. Perpich provides everything needed to grow and doesn’t prune too early. I’m grateful to Perpich for giving me space to grow.”