Drawing on 30-pound slabs of Bavaria-mined, Jurassic sedimentary rock sounds like something Fred Flintstone might do, but it's given litho-grapher David Smith a prestigious reward — entry as an associate royal etcher into the exclusive Royal Society of Painter Printmakers in London.

Founded in 1880, the elite group maintains a permanent collection of work by more than 1,000 painters and printmakers from around the world, and selected Smith's "Of Thoughts and Dreams." A print of the lithograph now resides with the collection at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. Smith attended the induction ceremony there in May.

A graduate of the University of Hawai'i Art Department and London's Slade School of Fine Art, Smith, 44, is the only Hawai'i-born artist represented at Oxford. Using stone lithography techniques that haven't changed in 200 years, Smith grinds, prepares and draws on stone and then makes prints from it on British-made Somerset paper. He combines the old tradition with photographic-plate lithography to create complex, layered, multicolored images.

Q. How did you discover lithography?

A. I've never been a painter, but I like to draw. A drawing professor at UH suggested that I might like lithography. I needed to fill requirements for my degree. I had done a lot of tiny, fastidious rapidograph drawings — maybe one piece a year in high school. Printmaking is great, it's slow-moving. Printmakers revel in process. I've come to incorporate a mix of photo-etching and photolith-ography with a lot of drawing in my work. But to do a litho on stone is like the Rolls Royce of lithography. It records all the nuances of your drawing, and if processed right, repeats them.

Q. What did you do when you found out you were accepted into the Royal Society?

A. I screamed at the top of my lungs and spun around a few times! I had to contain myself from running down the street and yelling it out!

Q. What privileges do you have as associate royal etcher?

A. As an associate royal etcher, besides having my work in their permanent collection, I won't have to be juried again to submit work to Royal Society exhibitions.

Q. Are you a full-time litho-grapher?

A. No. I work for the Department of Education's Teleschool program located at Kalani High School. I also teach printmaking classes at the Academy Art Center at Linekona on Saturdays. We start a new semester in January. Most of the hard-core printers are working people with families that find the time in our lives to do this. It is our passion.

Q. What is the "Mai Ka Pohaku" (From the Stone) project you started this year?

A. I started it to encourage printmaking and lithography in the Islands. Lithography has a strong history in Hawai'i — artists Jean Charlot, Juliet May Fraser and Madge Tennant did lithographs. I wanted to introduce it to serious artists whose work spoke about Hawai'i. This year, I chose (painter/pastel artist) Russell Lowrey. His "Orchid," a five-stone lithograph (to accommodate five colors) is a lovely, strong print.

(As the) project coordinator and printer, I work with the artist. It's a collaborative effort ... the artist draws it and picks the colors, and the printer knows what will work and what won't. The edition size is between 50 and 58 and will go on sale at our benefit print sale. We are a strong, supportive community, and this project helps the Honolulu Printmakers raise money for our programs.

Q. Your lithographs, such as "Of Thoughts and Dreams," have a mythical quality. What drives you to make a print, and what do you want to communicate to the viewer?

A. I layer my prints using a combination of techniques. The images and interactions in "Of Thoughts and Dreams" don't make clear sense, but there is an obvious scenario or narrative going on. I like to keep a certain amount of my work vague and open, to allow the viewer to get what they want out of it.

What drives me to make a print is, I think, the same things that drive us all — how we place ourselves in the world, how we interact, how we think of each other and how we dream. I'm fascinated with anatomy and DNA, and how it has, of late, been linked to ancient DNA. On the DNA level, we are all connected — no matter what color, race or sex. It's an amazing concept, because beyond wars, beyond how we like to classify and separate ourselves — underneath the skin — we are family. Science has been able to prove that.