Smile Tiles
I first started rolling out clay tiles and engraving words into them a few years ago, after I had just been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Receiving the diagnosis was a huge relief – like, after years of pushing ill-fitting puzzle pieces together, I could finally see part of the reference image.
But my newfound clarity didn’t change the fact that I was stuck in fight-or-flight mode, swinging back and forth like a metronome between panic and depression. I was also spending an increasing amount of time sitting in therapy waiting rooms, searching for meaning, encouragement, or even just a sign that I was in the right place or moving in the right direction. On the walls of those waiting rooms were photos of sprawling countryside landscapes, wild horses frozen mid-gallop and the occasional piece of driftwood with Live, Laugh, Love painted unironically in cursive.
I’ve always looked to art for orientation and meaning. My work is anchored in a need to understand who I am, but also why I am. It’s challenging work, peeling back all the layers of social conditioning and self-preservation in the hope of reaching some tender gravitational centre. And whenever I get close, I like to find the joy and humour in it. This process isn’t always easy but, if approached with the right sense of tragic optimism, it can be kind of fun.
Enter: my Smile Tiles.
Despite the name, these tiles weren’t born from a place of happiness. Much like the clay I use to make them, they are the result of an active excavation ... in this case of myself. And, like their final ceramic forms, they represent a fragile imperfection that, I believe, connects and heals.
I began rolling out these earthenware tiles alone in my kitchen, etching phrases into them that I needed to hear. I never planned the phrases in advance, paying little mind to punctuation or where the words broke on each line (apologies to my editor). The words are earnest and sad, funny and optimistic, cathartic and connected to my experiences with mental health.
The tiles by no means represent how I live my life, but rather how I’d like to live it one day. Which is to say: they’re aspirational but ultimately, I hope, relatable.
When I began sharing my tiles online, the response from friends and strangers alike was overwhelming, like I was being crushed by one of those hugs that just keeps going. Now, years later, over a thousand Smile Tiles hang on walls around the world – in homes, offices, recording studios, childcare centres, public bathroom walls … and yes, even therapy waiting rooms, alongside those driftwood carvings and galloping horses.
It’s the biggest honour to have a little piece of me in the lives of others, and I hope that this book can serve as a natural extension of an ongoing project that means so much to me. When you look through these pages, I hope you feel the sense of relief that comes from realising you’re not alone in experiencing certain difficult thoughts and emotions. I hope you feel seen, and I hope it helps.
Smile Tile Exhibition: Wow It’s All A Lot (2023), Wedge Gallery, Sydney.
Smile Tile Book
Wow It’s All A Lot (2023)
A heartfelt celebration of not quite having life figured out. This is a book for anyone going through a tough time. It's about celebrating the middle bits - the messy, awkward, uncomfortable bits - while navigating our way through the uncertainties of life.
When Samuel Leighton-Dore began rolling out clay tiles and engraving words into them, he had just been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder. After years spent in therapy waiting rooms, searching for meaning, encouragement and guidance, he turned to art to better understand who he was and why he was, slowing down to rediscover the joy and humour in the everyday.
Samuel's artwork and writing celebrate all the messy bits of trying to navigate our busy lives. Life, like the tiles themselves, can be hard and fragile, so it's okay to be a 'work in progress' and not have everything figured out all the time. His writing is relatable and comforting, like the world's biggest hug from a friend. It's also funny, sad, hopeful, inspirational and ultimately drawn from his own experiences with mental health and human connection.
With a foreword from psychologist Chris Cheers.
