Tom Small
Biography:
I was born in 1959, in a woodsy place north of Seattle. My early visual impressions include drawings of buildings on my father’s desk, skeletal frames of buildings under construction, Native American Art on the walls, and trees against the sky.
I’m told that as a child I whittled everything within reach, soap, flour, butter on the table. In high-school I started carving wood in earnest. I did my degree at the University of Washington, where I studied sculpture, bronze casting, welding, and Northwest Coast Native art.
Enamored with the abstract form. Initially very inspired by architectural sketches on his father's table.
In 1984 I fell in love with carving river stone, while living in the Olympic Mountains. This prompted me, in 1989, to create a studio in the woods, on top of a little mountain on the Island of San Juan..
Sculptures
How does light move through stone? I try to push past stone’s identity as gravity-bound. Can flight or movement be suggested?
Can architectural forms be invested with living skin and bone? I am currently working on a large arcing skeleton of steel, like the frame of a house or ship, on it, carved stone suggesting rectilinear muscles, and the feather and tissue which hint at the pull toward flight.
I’m intrigued by the ways in which human art, architecture, and design resonate with natural influences. One of my favorite resources is a very old Douglas Fir living on the land I occupy. When I lie on the ground and look up, it provides infinite intersections of line. Light presses in as its own entity. We don’t say, “that branch is in the wrong place.” The tree prompts me to ask myself, how can I achieve that integrity and excitement in my art?
