DAVID KIMBALL ANDERSON

David Kimball Anderson is well known for a lifetime of making art with steel and cast bronze, both large scale conceptual and narrative work as well as his delicate Still Life series.

Here the cold, everlasting industrial metal is transformed into a nurturing spiritual vessel for cut flowers, symbolizing ephemeral beauty, emotion and sacrifice. Anderson’s flowers pose like dancers at the moment their performance has ended, holding their stillpoint for the audience’s appreciation. Empty vessels await their opportunity to serve, prepared to celebrate or mourn.

Fence Wire is the star of the show for its deep connection to Anderson’s conceptual work, which pays homage to the forlorn beauty of man’s castoffs and unintended cultural touchstones.

Anderson was born in Los Angeles. His adoptive father was a master machinist who taught him the art and trade of metal fabrication at an early age. Anderson studied briefly at the San Francisco Art Institute before moving on to a vocational welding program in Oakland, California.

Anderson is the recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts individual grants, 1974, 1981 and 1988, as well as a Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1986. Anderson was the sole recipient of the 1973 SFMOMA SECA award.

Anderson’s work has been collected and exhibited in dozens of museums, including his concurrent exhibition, Bakersfield Standards, at the Bakersfield Museum of Art, on view through January 3, 2026.

He lives and works in Santa Cruz, California.