The Exhibit | Artist Biography | Images | Events

Bakersfield Standards is a sculptural tribute to California’s Central Valley, an enduring landscape shaped by beauty, resilience, and generational memory. For artist David Kimball Anderson, Bakersfield is not just a stop along the way but a constant point of return. His early drives along Highway 99, before the rise of Interstate 5, left a lasting impression of the region’s character: diners and neon signs, steel and sun, farm stands bursting with color and labor, all set against a backdrop of architectural grit and unspoken elegance. These impressions became a deep wellspring for his imagination, fueling a practice rooted in the physical and emotional materials of place. 

Unfolding across more than thirty years, this body of work is organized around 7 themes: Agriculture, Oil, Industry, Water, Nature, Culture, and Significant Women. Within these themes, Anderson reframes everyday objects and infrastructures as vessels of meaning. A rusted fan housing a finch nest, a fabricated water tower standpipe, a steel trough, or the subtle curve of a neon pipe become markers of a place that is at once unassuming and profound. Works such as Radio Bakersfield, Pomona to Famoso, and Cherry draw on Bakersfield’s cultural lineage, from the twang of the Bakersfield Sound to the memory of roadside fruit stands. Pieces like Basin and Mrs. Baker’s parlor furnishings speak to the quiet legacies of women who shaped the region’s civic heart. The steel itself, often sourced from Bakersfield’s own B&B Surplus, carries the patina of local history. 

Honoring the often-overlooked cultural fabric of the Central Valley, Anderson celebrates the ingenuity, labor, and lived experience of a region too often defined only by its output. His sculptures resist romanticism and nostalgia. Instead, they elevate the ordinary with reverence and precision. In doing so, they offer a powerful alternative to dominant narratives about California—one gounded in beauty, perseverance, and complexity. 

At its core, Bakersfield Standards is an act of recognition. Through material, memory, and form, this exhibit seeks to illuminate the soul of a place long misunderstood, revealing a landscape of work and weathered structures, of artistry, pride, and enduring cultural richness. Just as musical standards define a genre through songs passed down and reinterpreted over time, these sculptures offer visual “standards” of the Central Valley: forms and symbols that measure and express the region’s spirit with clarity, rhythm, and reverence. 

David Kimball Anderson (b. 1946, Los Angeles, CA) is a sculptor whose multidisciplinary practice has evolved over more than five decades, shaped by personal experience, spiritual inquiry, and an abiding connection to place. A lifelong Californian, Anderson was first introduced to drawing and the arts as a teenager through the encouragement of his high school teacher, Geraldine Turner, who enrolled him in life drawing classes at Scripps and Pomona Colleges. His early exposure to the dynamic Southern California art scene—visiting exhibitions at the Ferus Gallery and Pasadena Art Museum and drawing alongside artists like John Altoon—cemented his commitment to artmaking. 

Anderson attended the San Francisco Art Institute in 1964, where he studied with influential artists including Bruce Conner, Manuel Neri, and Wally Hedrick. His studies were interrupted by two years of military service during the Vietnam War, but he returned to the Bay Area and resumed his practice, eventually assisting ceramicist Peter Voulkos. In 1973, Anderson was awarded the prestigious SECA Art Award by the San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art (now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), which led to a solo exhibition at the museum. His work was also included in the Whitney Biennial in 1975. 

Working primarily in steel and other industrial materials, Anderson constructs meditative, often site-informed sculptures that span the symbolic and the utilitarian. His ongoing series explore themes such as transcendence, Americana, travel, and memory—touching on influences from Hopi ceremony and Buddhism to roadside artifacts and agricultural infrastructure. Anderson’s recent work is deeply rooted in the culture, labor, and landscapes of California’s Central Valley, particularly Bakersfield, whose textures and industrial materials he finds visually and spiritually compelling. 

His practice includes elements of photography and drawing, and he often integrates reference materials into his shows to foster a deeper viewer dialogue. Anderson has taught at institutions across the U.S. and continues to serve as a visiting artist and juror at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado. He lives and works in Santa Cruz, CA, and his work is represented in numerous museums and private collections nationally. 

Exhibition Tours  

Free with your BMoA Membership

Saturday, October 11 
Friday, November 7
Saturday, December 13 

Artists on Artists: David Kimball Anderson & Kristopher Raos

Saturday, November 8 
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm  

Join us for a special conversation between exhibiting artists David Kimball Anderson and Kristopher Raos as they discuss the ideas, influences, and environments that shape their work. From the material and cultural landscapes of California’s Central Valley to the poetics of form, memory, and signage, both artists explore how place imprints itself on artistic practice. Moderated in a casual, dialogue-driven format, this program invites audiences to listen in as Anderson and Raos reflect on their respective creative processes, evolving bodies of work, and the points at which their practices intersect. A Q&A with the audience will follow.