Gallery Hours:
Hours 11-6
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(closed Tuesday & Wednesday)

The Quicksilver Mine Co.
6671 Front St. (Hwy. 116)
Downtown Forestville

PHONE: 707.887.0799
FAX: 707.887.0146
MAIL: P.O. Box 844
Forestville, CA 95436

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� Sonoma's Own
The Quicksilver Mine Co.

Artifacts of Entropy:
Reliquary of the Obsolete

Judson King Smith

November 16�December 30, 2007

The Quicksilver Mine Co. presents a solo exhibition by sculptor Judson King Smith beginning on November 16th. This Show, Artifacts of Entropy: Reliquary of the Obsolete, opens with an artist reception on Saturday November 17th from 4�6pm, and continues through December 30th.

For this Exhibition, Smith frames our individual and cultural decline as if within a reliquary. This critique of the world honors the complexity of our collective predicament. "My entire life I have imagined how our creations, our physical and our made world will decay over time. This inspires (the way I make) my sculpture. All sorts of detritus make their way into the process: castings of matchbox cars, deer bones, toy airplanes, old spy and detective novels, scrap metal, car parts, native pottery and arrowheads," says the Artist. "The resulting sculpture, realized within the familiar context of an archeological museum display, becomes a reliquary or shrine honoring the obsolete remnants of our future�s past."

A Sebastopol sculptor, Judson Smith primarily works with concrete and found objects. He received his BFA in Sculpture from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1993, and has exhibited in recent group shows with the Pacific Rim Sculptors Group, at the Willits Center for the Arts, and in the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art�s 2006 Biennial Juried Exhibition.

Bakers Dozen 2007

"The impetus for my sculpture making is a reverence for entropy, decay, dilapidation, corrosion & rust.

My work has evolved from a fascination with urban ruins, graveyards of technology, industrial archaeology, obsolete machinery, abandoned buildings, ghost towns and shipwrecks. These influences are tempered by my recent years of living in the woods, which have introduced organic elements of the cycle of life and death, natural, human and animal forms.

I approach art making with a desire to provide a visceral experience of the impermanence of technology and the gradual & inevitable breaking down of our synthetic world by natural forces. I am particularly interested in exploring our identity as humans through history & evolution: with the influence of nature, technology, culture & religion.

Working with industrial and natural materials I transform what I see into objects and environments of aesthetic and raw expression."

�Judson King Smith
September 2007

"My Melancholy Headdress for Urban Decline" (detail 1), Cast concrete & mixed media, 40" X 19" X 9"

"My Melancholy Headdress for Urban Decline" (detail 2), Cast concrete & mixed media, 40" X 19" X 9"

Jud's untitled installation in the Gallery window

click on images for larger views

"Archaic Memory" (detail), Stained cast concrete, found objects, steel, 69" X 18" X 9"

"Amorphous Crucifix", Cast concrete, found objects, steel and railroad tie, 63" X 25" X 6"
Jud's Exhibition at Quicksilver
"Angel," Cast bronze, 30" X 11" X 11", 2007
"Rusty Cross Town," Concrete, found metal, 32" X 32" X 5", 2005
Jud Sharing his work
More about Jud Artist's Resume