David Smith is best known as a sculptor who welded steel components together to create abstract structures. His Dida Gondola, 1964, and Arc Wing, 1951, are on view in the adjacent gallery and in the Rotunda on the first floor. In the process of welding sculptures in his studio, Smith would burn a negative image of the forms onto the white floor. This is likely where he got the idea to create drawings by laying metal bars or scraps on bare paper as a kind of stencil, and then spraying the entire piece with aerosol enamel paint, a new medium in the 1950s. A series of drawings known as “Sprays” was the result. Smith spoke of seeking a quality of “accidental beauty” in his work that evoked the same feeling as when “...I’m sweeping the floor and I stumble and kick a few parts and happen to throw [them] into an alignment....”