"I've done spaceships," says brick sculptor Mara Smith. "I've done scenes from Shakespeare — Hamlet's hand, holding a skull — and parade scenes and mathematical formulas and biological structures and all kinds of stuff. I've even carved cartoons. One of the stranger things I've been asked to carve is a portrait of John Wayne 8 feet tall on the side of somebody's house." Smith is one of a handful of brick sculptors around the country who work exclusively with brick. Most others, she says, work as potters, designers, masons, or "are recently retired from the fish and game department." Smith landed her first brick sculpture commission without ever having carved brick. She was in art school studying ceramics and won the job
