River Dragon
The Whisperers
For more than six decades, Leo R. Smith III has created sculpture and paintings inspired by the landscape, stories, creatures, and imaginative life of the Upper Mississippi River.
For more than six decades, Leo R. Smith III has created sculpture and paintings inspired by the landscape, stories, creatures, and imaginative life of the Upper Mississippi River.
A concentrated selection showing Smith’s range in carved and polychromed wood, bronze, relief, assemblage, and mixed media—works in which river material, human form, animal life, and mythology repeatedly meet.
A curated selection tracing Leo R. Smith III’s Mississippi River world—from observed landscape and river life to figures, spirits, memory, mythology, and transformation.
Leo R. Smith III is an American sculptor and painter whose six-decade career has grown out of a lifelong relationship with the Upper Mississippi River.
Born in Winona, Minnesota, in 1947, Smith has spent most of his life near the river. Its bluffs and backwaters, wildlife and weather, ancient stone, working boats, people, stories, and mysteries have become the vocabulary of his art.
Smith began exhibiting his work while still a young man. He attended Winona State University and, in 1972, apprenticed with sculptor Konstantinos Papadakis in Minneapolis. Over the decades his practice has expanded across carved and polychromed wood, bronze, painting, relief, architectural carving, assemblage, mixed media, and large public commissions.
In 2005, the Minnesota Marine Art Museum acquired approximately 400 works representing a major body of Smith’s earlier career and his long artistic collaboration with Marilyn Smith. Rather than marking an endpoint, the acquisition preceded another two decades of intensive work. Smith continues to create at his studio near Homer, Minnesota, producing sculpture and paintings in which the observed world of the Mississippi meets memory, mythology, humor, and imagination.
Born 1947, Winona, Minnesota · Lives and works along the Upper Mississippi River near Winona.
Winona State University, Winona, Minnesota — attended
1972 — Apprenticeship with sculptor Konstantinos Papadakis, Minneapolis, Minnesota
1966 — Market Gallery, Winona, Minnesota — Solo
1967 — 7 Young Artists, St. Mary’s College, Winona — Group
1979 — College of St. Teresa, Winona — Two-Person Exhibition with Alan Kraning
c. 1980 — Groveland Gallery, Minneapolis — Solo
1980 — Inch Art, Rochester Art Center — Group
1991 — Extraordinary Figures: Folk Carvings by Leo R. Smith III, Paine Art Center — Solo
2005 — Lillian Davis Hogan Galleries, Saint Mary’s University — Solo
2007 — Our Town, Our River, Minnesota Marine Art Museum
2013–14 — The Four Seasons: Leo & Marilyn Smith Folk Art, Minnesota Marine Art Museum
2018 — Leo & Marilyn Smith Retrospective, Minnesota Marine Art Museum
2021 — Leo & Marilyn Smith Holiday Folk Art Collection, Minnesota Marine Art Museum
Minnesota Marine Art Museum — major holdings, approximately 400 works acquired in connection with the museum’s founding period
Paine Art Center & Gardens, Oshkosh — Gothic Gallery architectural carving; collection works
Winona Flood Wall — approximately 600-foot cast-concrete relief mural; sculptural master by Leo R. Smith III
Winona Health — Mother & Child
Blue Cross Blue Shield HMO, Lansing, Michigan — relief mural
1977 — Wisconsin Artists Working in the Arts Grant, Wisconsin Arts Board
1989 — Arts Midwest Regional Arts Fellowship, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts
Joanne Lyon Gallery, Aspen, Colorado
Elaine Horwitch Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
2010 — Leo Smith … The Museum … and the Muse, film by Jay Lurie
2012 — KSMQ Off 90 artist profile; Upper Midwest Regional Emmy nomination
2012 — Pamela Eyden, “River Dreams in Wood,” Big River Magazine
2004 — Better Homes & Gardens Santa Claus Collection, Vol. 6, “Mr. & Mrs. Smith Carve Santas”
Leo R. Smith III
American Sculptor and Painter
Homer, Minnesota · Upper Mississippi River
For museum exhibitions, gallery representation, acquisitions, research, and other professional inquiries, please contact:
Marilyn Smith
Studio & Artist Contact
marilyn.smith.mn@gmail.com