Shawn Smith was born in 1972 in Dallas, TX where he attended Arts Magnet High School and Brookhaven College before graduating from Washington University in St. Louis, MO with a BFA in Printmaking in 1995. Smith received his MFA in Sculpture from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2005. He has received artist-in-residencies from the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA and the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, France. In 1996, Smith was a recipient of the Clare Hart DeGolyer grant from the Dallas Museum of Art. Smith’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States including the Austin Museum of Art, Arthouse at the Jones Center (Austin), Galveston Art Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Southern Exposure (San Francisco), Oakland Arts Museum, Berkeley Art Center, Richmond Art Center, di Rosa Art and Nature Preserve (Napa), Dean Lesher Center for the Arts (California), Holter Museum of Art (Montana), Northwest Art Center (North Dakota), Kingston Gallery (Boston), Lawndale Art Center (Houston), the Armory Art Center (Florida), Guerilla Arts (Dallas), Wichita Falls Museum of Art, and the McKinney Avenue Contemporary (Dallas), among others. In 2006, he was commissioned to create a monumental public sculpture in San Francisco, CA. In 2012, his work will be included in "40 Under 40: Craft Futures" at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery. Smith currently resides in Austin, Texas.
