Helena Wood Smith

Who was Helena Wood Smith?

Helena Wood Smith was a landscape painter and member of the artist's colony at Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Born in Bangor, Maine, she attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York City in 1904. By 1910 she had moved to California and was an instructor at the School of Arts and Crafts in Carmel. In 1914 she was strangled and buried on the beach by her lover, Japanese art-photographer George Kotani, who was convicted of the crime and executed. Paintings by Smith were included in the Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1896, and the Annual Exhibition of the Art Club of Philadelphia in 1900. The later work was entitled "Merestead, Gardens of the Pilgrims". Smith was also discussed in Corelli C.W. Simpson's Leaflet of Artists.

Smith was the sister of novelist Ruel Perley Smith