About Tom Walsh

Tom Walsh

Thomas Walsh was born in Chicago in 1937. He received his MFA in Sculpture from the University of Michigan in 1962. Walsh taught at Southern Illinois University for 37 years during which time he was Head of the Graduate Sculpture Program. His sculpture and drawings have been featured in 56 solo exhibitions and his work is represented in over 60 public collections. Currently he resides in San Jose where he works, along with his wife Linda, at the San Jose State University Art Foundry.

ARTIST STATMENT

For the past 40 years I have attempted to condense and distill sculptural metaphors related to basic themes in my work that have been gestating since 1963: sacred-profane / life-death / transformation, etc. The parameters and focus of my work have been clearly established for at least 35 years. The perception, distillation and evolution of my metaphors are ongoing concerns and will remain so. My sources are wide-ranging and encompass artists as seemingly disparate as Giselbertus, St. John of the Cross, Pascal, Baudelaire, Manzu and Eliade. I am, also, continuously fascinated by the symbology of such structures as the Arch of Titus, the portals of gothic cathedrals, the St. Louis Arch…and the axis-mundi of Indian tepees.

My choice of cast metal, especially bronze, as a medium, is crucial. The enormous flexibility, the permanence, the carrying-power, and the transformation implications are essential to the type of statement…both universal and personal…I wish to make. Bronze is, also, and 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 baggage.