Casey Jex Smith (b.1976) creates intricate and fantastical landscape drawings with pen, graphite, and colored pencil. He constructs his environments with a superior force in mind, one that manipulates the human figure via sensual pleasures and patterns to create meaning. Smith’s elaborate visual style draws from the study of master printmakers, Persian Miniature painting, Dungeons & Dragons manuals, Where’s Waldo, and indie comics, borrowing compositional structures from role-play games, Architectural Digest spreads, pleasure gardens, and Mormon temple rituals. Having grown up as a Mormon in the conservative state of Utah, Smith ultimately creates his wondrously imagined worlds as a way to escape.

BIO:

Utah-based artist Casey Jex Smith received his BFA from Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, in 2003 and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, CA, in 2005.

He has mounted solo exhibitions at Honey Ramka Gallery in Brooklyn, NY (2019), Allegra LaViola Gallery in New York City, NY (2012), and The Lab in San Francisco, CA (2008). Smith has also participated in the group exhibitions Florescence at Turley Gallery, Hudson, NY (2022), Furrow at My Pet Ram, New York City, NY (2022), An Arcane Grace at Peep Projects, Philadelphia, PA (2022), and Abstraction Is Just A Word But I Use It at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT (2019).

Smith’s work was featured in the book Plant Magick: The Library of Esoterica, published by Taschen, as well as Artmaze Magazine and issue #11 of Le Jour D’Apres, published by Mondo Zero.