Throughout his forty-five-year career, David Kimball Anderson’s sculpture has been described as “a contemplation on the meaning of things that give beauty and pleasure.”

David Kimball Anderson has received a Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant, three NEA Arts Fellowships, and a California State University Research Grant. His work is in the collections of: Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY, National Endowment for the Arts, the World Bank, Art in Embassies, Washington, DC, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA, San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM, Albuquerque Museum and the City of Albuquerque, NM. From 1967-1971, he sporadically attended the San Francisco Art Institute.

Studio interior detail 2025 |
Photo: rr jones

Hello David, can you start by sharing where you are at the moment and what you’ve been up to today?

Hi Beverly. I am in my studio, which is also home. Our modest Santa Cruz property consists of three separate structures. Our house is a 1910 farmhouse. My writer wife, Lis Bensley, has a cozy office in a renovated 1940’s era garage structure. I have a one-thousand square foot studio workspace on the property. Our commute to work is painless. We lunch together in the compound’s patio.

What part of the country did you grow up? (urban/rural) and how did that impact your childhood?

In my early years, late-1940’s through mid-1950’s, I lived in Los Angeles. In 1959 we moved to Claremont, California, then a college town surrounded by citrus groves. There are still seven colleges, but sadly, few citrus trees.

Do you remember the first art or design object that impacted your imagination?

Like many Southern California teenagers, I was enthralled with the visuals and the physicality of hot rod culture. The cartoonist ‘Big Daddy’ Roth, Ed Roth, 1932-2001, was the illustrator of choice for many of us. Later, my high school art teacher, Geri Turner, a graduate student at the Claremont Graduate School, introduced me to the American ‘transcendentalist’ painter Morris Graves, whose animated images of animals and nature offered me a bridge between populist and contemporary art.

The drawings are intimate, “It’s not that they are private, nor less relevant to my overall studio work. It’s that they come at times of calm and without intention to exhibit. I will spend two or three weeks at my ‘clean’ table and make twenty or thirty pieces. “
Heat Points 1
Acrylic and ink on Rives BFK
15.5 x 22 inches
2024

You spent formative years in the San Francisco and Berkeley area, what was that era like? What stays with you from that time?

Prior to moving to the Bay Area to attend the San Francisco Art Institute, I had the good fortune during my senior year of high school to enroll in life drawing classes at Scripps College and the then titled Los Angeles Art Center School, now the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. I was encouraged by faculty at both schools to visit Los Angeles galleries and the Pasadena Art Museum. Walter Hopps was the curator at the Pasadena at that time. As a very young artist, a kid really, I saw many significant shows and exhibitions. Alan Kaprow at the Pasadena, Jay de Feo at the Ferus Gallery, Robert Smithson at Dwan. This was my foundation with which I arrived at SFAI.

My Berkeley years began after an honorable discharge from the US Navy including one combat tour in Vietnam. Rather than return to SFAI full time, I opted out of the pursuit of degrees and began working full-time for the American ceramist/sculptor Peter Voulkos, assisting with the fabrication of his monumental bronzes. There were substantial benefits. Not the least of which was attention to my work from museum directors, curators and gallerists.

This was a time of dramatic political and social awareness and action. It was also a time of accepted drug and alcohol abandon. The art world was still doggedly hanging on to the romance with alcohol. And other substances were becoming woven into the social mechanics of the art world. So, you ask what stays with me from that time? Most importantly, is the memory of the discomfort and embarrassment of acute alcoholism. I remain continually grateful for my good fortune to have had a remission of same in 1984.

Nutrient Points 2 | 2013 Acrylic and ink on Rives BFK 15 X 22” inches

Even though you are most well-known for your sculpture, we loved showing your works on paper. How does that work emerge?

Thank you so much for your ‘discovery’ of my works on paper. I rarely exhibit these. It’s not that they are private, nor less relevant to my overall studio work. It’s that they come at times of calm and without intention to exhibit. I will spend two or three weeks at my ‘clean’ table and make twenty or thirty pieces. I may not return to the works on paper for a year or more. Thus, they are not well known. Very few are consigned to galleries. They remain in my flat files, sometimes for years.

They are intimate works. A gallerist friend, Renato Danese, since passed, RIP, loved drawings. A number of Renato’s clients also loved works on paper. Some took his advice to refrain from framing their collection and, rather, have flat files installed in their homes. He would tell of gatherings of collectors when after dinner they would all don white gloves and open the drawers and be with the pieces intimately, no glass etc.

Anderson’s work encompasses steel sculpture, photography (as documentation and installation) and drawings on paper
Detail of the studio 2025 | Photo: rr jones

What does your studio look like? Do you keep a journal or sketchbook?

My studio is barn-like. A wood frame structure. High ceilings. One big roll-up door facing south. And one very large white wall, 12’ x 36’, upon which nothing hangs, nor will it ever! Not even a push pin. It is utterly glorious. My stance drives my painter friends crazy.

Yes. I always have an active journal/sketchbook. But, like the works on paper, I might not open it for months. When I do, it may be to attach a clipping, a quote or an image from a weekly periodical, like the Sunday NY Times T Magazine, a favorite source. The inside cover of my journals often note the years the journal was or is active. Three or four years is common.

Do you have a favorite art historic period or culture that you return to again and again?

Not a period so much. I would say I feel a kinship with artists for whom material is a primary vehicle. A vehicle for a narrative, a transcendent sensation, a simple observation or even a theory. A few with whom I feel close: Barry Le Va, Robert Grosvenor, Afton Love, Erika Wanenmacher, Dieter Roth, Kiki of course…

Now that you are based in California again, what does your daily routine look like? Any morning or evening rituals you’d like to share?

OMG, we have a nearly two-year-old Labrador Retriever who needs endless exercising. We do ‘ball retrieving’ at 7:30 am and a 45-minute walk at Antonelli Pond at 8:30 am.

I am up early. I read best at 6-7 am. I am currently reading essays by critic Hal Foster.

I work every day in the studio. Some days two hours, some days six. Rarely eight.

Installation view | Cottonwood leaves 2024 watercolor and ink on Rives BFK
15x22 inches

The weave of my love for drawing and my exposure to culture began in my teens. Geraldine Turner, my high-school art teacher, recognizing that my academic studies were not a priority for me, enrolled me in life drawing classes at Scripps College and Pomona College, Claremont, California. Geraldine Turner was a graduate student at the Claremont Graduate University. She opened a door for me, and I am eternally grateful to her.

You mentioned that you love road trips and driving – any memorable routes or recommendations?

The past few years, a decade really, my most traveled route is: Paso Robles, Bakersfield, Las Vegas, St. George, Grand Junction, Snowmass Village, Aspen, Denver, Colorado Springs, Ojo Caliente, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, Sedona, Kingman, Barstow, home.

I drive a 2011 Chevrolet Silverado 4WD pickup with 236,000 miles. I recommend the mineral hot springs in Ojo Caliente.

Finally, what are you working on or looking forward to this year?

Ahh, consequent of our work together, and since returning from my opening with you, I have just begun new works on paper. For the last year I have been building pieces with lichen encrusted fence posts. I want to incorporate very hair-thin silver filaments from post to post. I am finding it impossible. But I can do it on paper with an extremely hard/light graphite pencil.

I am also prepping for several shows in the fall.

Find David on instagram

19 | Artist profile: David Kimball