Phillip K. Smith III was born in 1972 and grew up in Southern California's Coachella Valley. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, in 1995 and 1996, respectively. From his Palm Desert, CA studio, the artist creates light-based work that draws upon ideas of space, form, color, light and shadow, environment, and change.

Featured in hundreds of online and print publications, Phillip is known for creating large scaled temporary installations such as Lucid Stead in Joshua Tree, Reflection Field and Portals at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, ¼ Mile Arc in Laguna Beach, and The Circle of Land and Sky at inaugural 2017 Desert X exhibition. His public artworks are sited in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Kansas City, Nashville, Oklahoma City and beyond; and the artist was recently commissioned to create permanent, light-based works for the cities of West Hollywood, CA and Bellevue, WA. The artist's work is also included in the exhibition and catalog Unsettled, organized by the Nevada Museum of Art and artist Ed Ruscha (traveling between Nevada Art Museum, Anchorage Museum, Palm Springs Art Museum from 2017-2019). The artist's work is also featured in the Denver Art Museum's current exhibition "LIGHT".