Helena Wood Smith

Helena Wood Smith (1865-1914) was born on March 9th in Bangor, Maine, and attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. By 1912 she had moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California and was the instructor of “drawing and painting from nature” at the local School of Arts & Crafts. She exhibited at the San Francisco Art Association (1910-13), Carmel Arts & Crafts Club (1913), and the Hotel Del Monte Art Gallery (1911-13). In August 1914 she was strangled and buried on the beach by her lover, Japanese art-photographer George Kodani, who was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Part of her early exhibition history includes the: Boston Art Club (1893-1900), Annuals of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1896-97), Water Color Club of Washington, D.C. (1902), and Annual of the Art Club of Philadelphia (1900). At the latter her entry was entitled "Merestead, Gardens of the Pilgrims". Smith was also discussed in Corelli C.W. Simpson's Leaflet of Artists (J.W. Bacon, 1893).
Smith was the sister of novelist Ruel Perley Smith