Becca is simultaneously an abstraction and an embodiment of its subject. It creatively depicts the buoyant energy of Smith’s daughter Rebecca, who was ten years old at the time it was made. Smith, a skilled welder, exploited the aesthetic possibilities of this industrial process, creating thick masses of weld at each joint and deftly signing and dating the work in weld on the base. Smith also recognized the extraordinary physical challenge of working with steel, the “physical laws [of which] do not permit the flow of realization as easily as most painting materials.” Sculpture, he observed, “demand[s] more premeditation and conviction, [more] assurance . . . than when the same form is indicated by paint or line on the plane surface.”