Phillip K. Smith III received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. From his Palm Desert, CA studio, he creates light-based work that draws upon ideas of space, form, color, light and shadow, environment, and change.
Featured in hundreds of online and print publications, Smith is known for creating large scaled temporary installations such as Lucid Stead in Joshua Tree, Reflection Field and Portals at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, 1/4 Mile Arc for Laguna Art Museum’s Art & Nature, and The Circle of Land and Sky at the inaugural edition of DesertX in 2017. His public works are sited throughout California and beyond, and his work is also included in the forthcoming exhibition and catalog Unsettled organized by the Nevada Museum of Art.

1/4 Mile Arc – a large-scale installation specially commissioned by Laguna Art Museum for Art & Nature, was on view from November 4 through November 6, 2016. The spectacular site-specific installation stretched along much of Main Beach with approximately 250 stainless steel posts, just above the high tide line. The mirror-polished surfaces of the 10-foot posts, arranged in an arc across Laguna’s iconic Main Beach, reflected the changing colors of the ocean, sky, and shoreline and formed a visible marker between the man-made and natural worlds.