MURAL / 2024
SEE THE CREATION STORY →
Pasadena North Fair Oaks Mural
The finished artwork: an African American quilt structure holding portraits, places, and the history of Black Main Street.
VIEW WORK DETAILS →01
I AM|A CREATOR.
Creator and Creations
WHO I AM / WHAT I MAKE
JASON TIMOTHY SMITH
Jason Timothy Smith is a Los Angeles–based artist working under the name 7HE SMI7H. Across paintings, murals, prints, objects, and experiments, he builds images from layered histories, handmade systems, and the visual language of the communities around him.
I am a Creator. I Believe in Creatives. I Share Creation Stories.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I make work about creation—who gets seen as a creator, what our hands carry, and how images can hold memory. The practice begins with the object: color, surface, portrait, pattern, and material. From there it opens outward into faith, culture, vocation, influence, and community.
Deeper frameworks—including N.A.I.V.E. and First Last / Last First—shape how I approach narrative, attention, and cultural context. They emerge gradually through the work and writing rather than standing between the viewer and the art.
VISUAL INDEX
WORK
PAINTINGSMURALSPRINTSOBJECTSEXPERIMENTS
02
I BELIEVE|IN CREATIVES.
When Seeing Is Believing
WORLDVIEW / THOUGHT / CONVICTION
IDEAS / ESSAYS / REFLECTIONS
IDEAS / WRITINGS
A slow room for beliefs about creation, creativity, creators, and the worlds they inhabit.
VIEW FEATURED WRITINGS →FEATURED ENTRIES
Selected frameworks, essays, and developing ideas.
FLLF
First Last / Last First looks toward overlooked people, practiced hands, local communities, and stories that deserve sustained attention.
FRAMEWORK / ESSAY / VISUAL NOTEN.A.I.V.E.
Narrative / Accessible / Innovative / Visually Engaging: a developing framework for how the work approaches story, audience, invention, and image-making.
FRAMEWORK / NOTES / LONGER ARGUMENTTHE CREATOR|AND THE CREATIVES
Genesis, vocation, art and theology, beauty, craft, and the meaning of human creativity.
ESSAY / REFLECTION / POEM / VIDEO03
I SHARE|CREATION STORIES.
The Art of Storytelling
SERIES / EPISODES / ARCHIVE
SERIES 01
PASADENA / NORTH FAIR OAKS
A PICTURE OF|HISTORY AND HOPE
The people, research, process, and neighborhood meaning surrounding the Black Main Street mural.
ENTER THE STORY →From a measured wall to a neighborhood image.
Commissioned by the North Fair Oaks Empowerment Initiative, the mural gathers portraits, places, and histories connected to Pasadena’s Black Main Street inside the visual rhythm of an African American quilt. These photographs follow the work as its underlying grid becomes color, figure, memory, and public presence.
01 / FOUNDATIONThe wall becomes a field. Measured intervals establish the scale and rhythm before the image exists.
02 / STRUCTUREA quilt becomes the architecture. Blocks of color turn the long facade into a connected visual system.
03 / THE MAKERThe hands enter the work. A monumental act of drawing places creation itself inside the picture.
04 / MEMORYHistory takes its place. Portraits and neighborhood landmarks settle into the quilt one square at a time.
05 / ASSEMBLYThe fragments begin to speak together. Pattern, people, place, and gesture become one continuous public image.
06 / RELEASEThe work meets the street. The finished mural holds its histories at the scale of everyday neighborhood life.
07 / AFTERLIFEThe mural belongs to the neighborhood. Once released, the work becomes part of the route—seen in motion, revisited, and carried forward.
IN THE NEWS
Local reporting extended the mural’s public life beyond the wall, documenting the unveiling and preserving community voices, neighborhood history, and outside interpretations of the work.
PASADENA NOW
A Picture of History and Hope
The report documents the public unveiling and connects the finished mural to the neighbors, stories, and wider improvement efforts that helped bring it into being.
READ + WATCH ↗
PASADENA STAR-NEWS
Community mural honors prominent Black icons along an African American Main Street
The coverage places the mural’s portraits in a broader historical frame, emphasizing the people and institutions remembered along Pasadena’s Black Main Street.
READ ↗