Bio/News

Emily Budd is a sculptor who uses alchemical casting and metallurgy practices both ancient and contemporary to explore themes of transformation, memory, and queer renewal. Her project, Memorial for Queer Rhyolite, marks an AIDS-era queer utopian effort in a Nevada ghost town and has been recognized by Nevada Humanities, The Washington Post, and Discovery Channel’s Mysteries of the Abandoned: Hidden America among others. Her essay, Cruising the Monuments of the Outskirts Las Vegas (After Smithson), was published in the ecoartspace book, The New Geologic Epoch. Budd founded the expanding social form project, Aluminati, which materializes the transformative and collaborative power of foundry craft to imagine and empower deep change, and was recently featured in Southwest Contemporary. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as the Barrick Museum of Art in Las Vegas, SEED Lab at the Anchorage Museum, the Kentucky Museum, Create! Magazine, Site:Brooklyn, and The Bureau of Queer Art in Mexico City. Budd received an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2018 and has attended multiple artist residencies including at Recology San Francisco, the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, PLAYA Arts & Science Residency Program, and recently at High Desert Test Sites. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of Art in Sculpture at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.


Recent Press:
Emily Budd Breaks the Mold: Founder of the Foundry Project Aluminati, by Karla Lagunas. Southwest Contemporary, Vol. 10, Radical Futures. September 6, 2024.

Abandoned Lot, Secluded Cove by Emily Budd by ASAP Gallery. August 6, 2024.

Interview on Discovery's Mysteries of the Abandoned: Hidden America, Season 2, Episode 1. Available on Discovery Plus.

Rethinking Land Art at the Barrick, by Brent Holmes for Double Scoop Nevada.

Artists React to the Legacy of Nevada Land Art in Modern Desert Markings, by Steve Jansen for Southwest Contemporary.