Thomas Walsh
Thomas Walsh's interest in art was nurtured during his early years in Chicago with visits to the Art Institute of Chicago, and continued in academic programs at the University of Michigan. Walsh was fortunate to participate in the metal casting renaissance in this country. While at Michigan, Walsh pioneered the adaptation of the ceramic-shell investment process to art metal casting. He was also instrumental in promoting and facilitating the first art metal conferences in America which eventually evolved into the ISC International Conferences.
Walsh received a permanent teaching position at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, where he designed and supervised the construction of one of the best and most complete university art foundries in the country. The foundry was a place for Walsh to create an ongoing body of sculpture in an atmosphere he created as a center for sculptors to come and work, share ideas and develop techniques. He now works out of the foundry at San Jose State University.
He states: My choice of cast metal as a medium is crucial. The enormous flexibility, the permanence, and the implications of transformation are essential to the type of statement, both universal and personal, I wish to make. My use of bronze is an affirmation of the past and a conscious attempt to synthesize with it. Conversely, my love of cast aluminum lies in the fact that it is a contemporary metal and carries no art historical references.
Walsh received a Tiffany Foundation Grant and was awarded the Prix de Rome in Sculpture. In 1982 he became the first Caldwell Resident in the Arts at Indiana University in Bloomington, and also received an NEA Grant. During the following 15 years he received 9 residencies at foundations across the country culminating in a 4 month residency at the Kohler Arts-Industry Program in Kohler, Wisconsin. He has been featured in more than 50 solo exhibitions and is represented in more than 40 public collections.
For more information, contact
Gwenda Joyce/Art & Landscape
707.938.8877 or artandland@hughes.net
www.artandland.com
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