About Judson King Smith
Judson King Smith was three years old when he first fell for a ruin. A broken-down garage sat on a vacant lot near his childhood home in Los Angeles — he called it the "crash bam garage" — and he'd beg his parents to walk him down so he could press his face to the dirty windows and try to make sense of what was inside. It was eerie and dilapidated and it filled him with something like wonder. He didn't know it yet, but that feeling — amazement at a structure surrendering to time — would end up being the seed of a lifetime's work.
At seventeen, in Los Angeles, and already surrounded by the art world, he stood in front of “The Ozymandias Parade”, a work by Ed Kienholz. It was powerful, political, raw, and crude — and it gave him permission. He thought, "If this can be art then I too can be an artist." His father, an illustrator and commercial art director encouraged him to follow his dream.
Smith earned his BFA in Sculpture from California College of the Arts in 1993, and has spent the decades since building and exhibiting his mixed-media assemblage from concrete, steel, plaster, resin, bone, circuit boards, life casts, and a variety of found objects. Judson’s sculptures and environments return again and again to archaeology and the human condition— all of it circling the same questions that gripped him at three years old: what does the passage of time mean to me as a human? Where do I fit within the frame of the past and the future?
He has exhibited widely throughout California, New York, and London. In 2025, his work was awarded Third Prize at the Crocker-Kingsley Biennial. Consequently, Anthropocene Dream was selected for inclusion in Selections from the Crocker-Kingsley Biennial 2025 at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, the most significant recognition of his career to date.
Artist’s Statement
For the last 30 years, sculpture making has been the discipline through which I have engaged a singular vision. The theme of my life's work was born from a childhood fascination with dinosaurs and the archaeology of the Mesozoic period, which inspired my fantasy of our modern human world being unearthed thousands of years from now as an archaeological relic. The idea that modern humanity will also become part of the fossil record has influenced my work ever since.
This perspective led to my fascination with industrial archaeology, abandoned buildings, shipwrecks, weathered surfaces, and decay. I imagine our technologies, monuments, and everyday objects far into the future, fragmented and reclaimed by natural forces.
I make abstract and figurative sculpture by combining resin, plaster, and concrete with found materials. My palette includes bones, circuit boards, toy cars, religious statuary, machine parts, remnants of plastic model kits, and antique oddities. I collect these materials from junk shops, walks, and everyday encounters with discarded objects. I think of them as letters in an alphabet, and my challenge is to arrange them in ways that say something transcendent.
My work grows out of a search for relationships between objects and the metaphors that emerge when they are combined. Through assemblage, these materials become artifacts of a speculative archaeology. I am particularly interested in the contrast between natural and manufactured forms—the human body, tree roots, and bones merged with architecture, machinery, and technological fragments. I think of myself as a conduit for conversations between the objects in my collection.
My figurative works often begin with plaster or concrete casts of the human body, which I combine with natural and industrial elements such as skulls, roots, gears, and antique cruciforms. Weathered patinas give the sculptures the appearance of age, erosion, and decay.
The intersection of the synthetic and organic, the manufactured and primal, forms the foundation of my investigation. Through the deterioration of technology, the majesty and vulnerability of the human body, and the tension between our intellectual brilliance and primal origins, I explore impermanence. Rust, fragmentation, and decay become reminders of the fragile grace that runs through all things.
My deepest intention is to create artwork that conveys the magic, horror, and wonder of what it means to be human in our time.
Profile of Judson King Smith at The House of Miraculous Recovery exhibition, Transmission Gallery, Oakland, CA.
CV
Education
1993 BFA, Sculpture, with Distinction, California College of Arts & Crafts
Solo Exhibitions
10/03/2025–11/22/2025 The Banquet of Now (30-Year Retrospective), Felix Kulpa Gallery, Santa Cruz, CA
08/2024 The House of Miraculous Recovery, Transmission Gallery, Oakland, CA
05/2018 Icarus Down – Revisited (Installation), Blasted Art Gallery, Santa Rosa, CA
2015–2024 Man on the Verge of Total Fragmentation (Installation), Petaluma Center for the Arts, Petaluma, CA
11/2007 Artifacts of Entropy; Reliquary of the Obsolete, Quicksilver Mine Co., Forestville, CA
Group & Juried Exhibitions
03/2025–05/2025 Selections from the Crocker-Kingsley Biennial 2025, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
01/2025 Crocker-Kingsley Biennial 2025 (Third Prize), Blue Line Arts, Roseville, CA
09/2024 Politically Charged, Blue Line Arts, Roseville, CA
01/2024 Perpetual, Influx Gallery, London, UK
2023 Installation inside The Chapel of Babel (Michael Garlington), Burning Man, Reno, NV
12/2022 What the F*ck, UMA Gallery, Oakland, CA
2017 New Politic, Petaluma Center for the Arts, Petaluma, CA
2014 Small Works, Limner Gallery, Hudson, NY
2013 Show of Heads, Limner Gallery, Hudson, NY
05/2012–06/2014 The Spirit of the Man, Paradise Ridge Winery, Santa Rosa, CA
2012 Sylvia White Annual Juried Show, Sylvia White Gallery, Ventura, CA
10/2012 4x4 (Retrospect), Sebastopol, CA
2011 Sylvia White Annual Juried Show, Sylvia White Gallery, Ventura, CA
06/2011–11/2011 Geyserville Sculpture Exhibit (Jurors: Deborah Lahane for the Voigt Family Sculpture Foundation, and Stephen Oliver), Geyserville, CA
07/2011 Sonoma Blight, FireHouse North Gallery, Berkeley, CA
07/2011 Grand Opening Gala, HammerFriar Gallery, Healdsburg, CA
04/2011 Vintage Future, Iron Horse Winery, Forestville, CA
05/2009 Ryan Douglas / Judson King Smith, HammerFriar, Healdsburg, CA
09/2008 & 09/2009 Hand Car Regatta, Santa Rosa, CA
02/2008 Art & Impermanence, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sebastopol, CA
02/2007 Baker's Dozen 2007, Quicksilver Mine Co., Forestville, CA
02/2006 Can You Dig It?, Fresno City College, Fresno, CA
12/2006 2006 Biennial, Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Sonoma, CA
Commissions & Collections
2012 Commission, Transcendence, Judy Voigt of Voigt Family Sculpture Foundation, Sonoma County, CA
Awards & Grants
2025 Third Prize, Crocker-Kingsley Biennial 2025, Blue Line Arts, Roseville, CA
2025 Selected for inclusion, Selections from the Crocker-Kingsley Biennial 2025, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
Publications & Press
08/24/2024 Malcolm Ryder, “Parts” — review of The House of Miraculous Recovery, Transmission Gallery
2026 “Meet Judson Smith: Visual Artist, Sculptor, Contractor” — online interview, ShoutoutSoCal
2014 Art Direct Magazine, Issue #21
2013 Art Direct Magazine, Issue #20
06/07/2007 “Wild Art,” Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, CA
Fall 1999 Art Forum Magazine