DOUGO SMITH
STRAIGHT OUTTA
VENICE

by Gerry Fialka

( 7/17/2025 (8/5/2025) We hear that Dougo has passed.  Then we heard he didn’t pass, then he did then he didn’t. More on that later.  Bless him.)

Preeminent Venice artist DougO Smith captures the true spirit of our Beachtown with his decades of creativity in paintings, murals, comedy, music and . . . well, words can’t express the far-out phantasmagoria . . . I got it: THE EPITOME OF VENICE CALIFORNIA !!! He is much like the Library of Congress description for N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton: “culturally historical and aesthetically significant.” And more so like “culturally hysterical and angelically mind fucking.” His brilliant and stimulating art expands Venice minds, bodies and souls with a great googly moogly sense of humor.

DougO is constantly bursting with unbridled glimpses of the universe that capture his colossal imagination and intensifies our community. He once told me, “Art isn’t” – a variation of McLuhan’s “The Balinese have no word for art, they do everything as well as they can.” DougOisms run rampant in my lexicon: “Thelonious Monk heard all the same notes Charlie Parker heard, but only decided to play some of them.” I have blown major jazz musicians’ minds with that maxim.
Thanks Doug. You are beyond verbal description. Your art induces laughtears that transcend all space and time.

In the 80’s, when the Abott Kinney Fest was really “VENICE” he joined my band Black Shoe Polish as special guest vocalist, Hymie, the Puerto Rican Jimi Hendrix, singing “The Wind Cries Maria.” He transformed musical performance art/street theater into otherworldly merriment. (Currently, that yuppie-ass consumer fair is not like it was back in the good ol’ daze. Now, I ask people there “In which direction shall I projectilely puke?”) DougO has always stayed true to Venice grassroots and street culture, the real thing!!! His outrageous sense of humour accentuates having FUN!

DougO is a teacher, too. He taught me how skiffle music spawned the Beatles. We’d talk for hours probing the human condition and the creative process ala conversational curiosity. Then he’d combine Lenny Bruce with Salvador Dali and R. Crumb singing every Beatles song in a medley ala Father Guido Sarducci, but better. And that’s pretty dang good. Ned Sloane and our crew at “the bench” on the Boardwalk would rejoice in laughing so hard the tears would flow from the sky to eternity and beyond. Dig infinity. DougO has sung nearly every bebop song by Charles “YardBird” Parker to me personally with righteous rascality. Beatific!

He’s been a mentor to many, including artist/drummer supreme Sky Willie Z. They recently painted the new mural together at the Trading Post, 1313 Main Street. Sky writes: “DougO Smith and I go way beyond just painting together. It’s a Venice-born brotherhood. Doug’s the kind of artist that bleeds the street. His lines, colors, layers and funny quotes tell the story in motion. It makes the art a stationary cartoon sequence. It tells the truth about this city. No filters. No fake shit. We didn’t link up to chase galleries or play art world politics. We linked because we both see Venice for what it really is – it’s our Dirty Paradise – beautiful, broken, loud, and alive. Doug taught me to paint the noise, the grit, the ghosts of ghost town. Every collab we’ve done feels like we’re tagging the soul of the city, not to mark it, but to bring it back to life. The Trading Post Mural is a direct reflection of a time when artists like Doug Smith, Jeff Ho, Ric Clayton and so many others I looked up to growing up in Venice thrived. They were/are living that raw, beatnik, creative skate life I’ve always connected with – simultaneously coexisting in Venice, all creating something unique and raw that makes me get excited to live every day. When I started sketching the scene, I knew it had to be more than just a mural. It was a homage to Venice in 1984 punk rock shows, backyard ramps, surfing every morning, and making art every night. A snapshot of the culture that raised me. When I showed it to them, they were instantly stoked to jump in. That meant everything. It was their era — the time they were thriving — and now I get to honor that moment while living my own version of it. This piece is for them, for us, and for Venice.

Always. Our work hits hard because it has to. It’s punk rock. It’s street gospel. It’s for the skaters, the burnouts, the lifers, the dreamers. Doug’s a legend out here, and he’s helped shape not just my art, but the way I walk through this world. Yes, we Kill.”

DougO is true to his hometown. He declares, “Bloom where you are planted.” As a kid, he collected pop bottles under the Cheetah Club, not really realizing what great music was over him. Years later, his amazing Mom took his to see Frank Zappa at the Santa Monica Civic, which was highly influential. Recalling the “Morning of the Magicians” book, he mashed alchemy and Egyptology to cover all the walls of Kelly’s apartment on Rose Avenue. Someday the Getty will be peeling back the layers of paint to discover art that resonates as much as any cave drawings.

I have shot much film footage of DougO for years on many different formats including Pixelvision. You can see in this very article the design he did for the 2nd PXL THIS Film festival, featuring the Fisher Price PXL2000 toy camcorder. We celebrate our 35th Film Festival on Nov 16, 2025. Maybe someday, all this footage will be joined in one solid lump, so we can wallow in the mythological happenings, like his hilarious imitations of wild Boardwalk characters Ralph and Crazy Mary. I am most proud of a sequence that looks like a Fellini film, where DougO yelps, “What ever happened to mailbox cereal?” What did? Who knows? Dig unknowingness.

I documented the surreal soriee of DougO singing “Mannish Boy” (classic blues by Muddy Waters & Bo Diddley) with the erotic dancer Wendy deep in the real Venice underground (curated by the great Will Raabe of the Comeback Inn) at a venue which is now called Gin Rummy on Washington Blvd. A local artist said she felt as though she was knee deep in the swamp muck of 1930’s Berlin sensations. DougO’s cosmic cabaret evoked Albert Einstein’s “One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.”

His celestial marvels always inspire me. We were so proud to produce his first art show entitled “Art and Nothingness” at Sponto Gallery in October, 2003. That historical event can be seen on Youtube in Koby Newell’s Video

and SelectaRasKel’s

My film SPONTO BEATS details DougO’s endless influence

DougO has always been inventive creating something outta nothing. His free-spiritedness has helped me see the paradoxical exuberance of being through art, summarized by Brian Eno’s “Play is how children learn. Art is how adults play.” I look forward to how DougO will reword dat aphorism.

One of his rippin’ ripplin’ murals still reverberates the Pacific Ocean vibrancy. It is located at the NE corner of Holly Court and Harbor Street. Whomever the patron was who commissioned this 1996 mural has to be thanked for supporting a local art hero. Twenty nine years later, it still holds up – transcendental masterworks are timeless.

He’ll paint on anything: skateboards, guitars, surfboards, cardboard boxes, splintered wood planks, jackets – it is unending. Check online to see his phenomenal surfboard called “Venicopoly” subverting the board game Monopoly to make a statement about gentrification. Dan Levy of Juice Magazine wrote: “DougO’s work depicts the power of the ocean along the simple lines of beach architecture in a classic presentation of style and soul . . . Smith’s work continues to be a unique and invaluable part of the LA urban art community.”

A local source wrote that DougO is hard to track down. Not really, since he has lived on the streets of Venice, his hometown for decades, and truly knows the ins and outs of this community. He’s always been around and survives whatever extreme conditions. DougO might be heard barking, “I don’t need no stinkin’ studio,” to quote the bandit “Gold Hat” in the infamous 1948 film “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” DougO, the source of the real mother mountain range of Venice arts, can be reached through his instagram @dhugsmith. So put that in your smoke and pipe it!

So what is the take-away from reading this essay? Or better, what can we do? Befriend and support creative makers in our community, like DougO. He continues to practice how to share resourcefulness in seeing with new eyes, hearing with new ears, discovering new questions and metaphors. DougO lives in the present and paints a detailed history of the future.