Interview With PNW Sculptor Tom Gormally! On Foxes, Crutches and the Apocalypse! Our Ten-Year Anniversary Continues! – seattlepi.com

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Xavier: This is our latest Covid-Era interview, this one with Seattle conceptual/expressionist sculptor Tom Gormally. Over the years, I have been in several group shows with Tom and I have always been super-impressed by his mix of hand-carved elements set into conceptually-charged mindscapes and often humorous, rebus-type combines. I jumped at the chance to talk to another sculptor and as you will see my level of glee was absolutely palpable!

Xavier: Please take a moment to introduce yourself and describe your work for us!

Tom Gormally: I have been studying and making art, with many different materials, for over forty years. I primarily work with wood and light to create sculptural scenes that combine contemporary structure and folk-art aesthetics to lay out my thoughts and feelings as I process whats happening in the world around me. Also, the folk art of the American Southwest blended with a sense of scale and physical presence that came from my time as a jet mechanic in the Navy stationed in New Mexico during the Vietnam era.

The influence of folk art and my time in the military were some of the first inspirations for my art, and those threads from that time in my life have remained strong influences on both the style and substance of my work.

Xavier: How long have you been working as a sculptor?

Tom Gormally: I started art school in 1973 and attended graduate school, where I created art and taught undergraduate classes from 1977-79.

Id say that Ive been working as a sculptor since my first appearance in a gallery group show in 1975, so about 45 years.

Xavier: Very cool! So do I sense a kind of Joseph Beuys, personal/ autobiographical approach to making the work or something else, something more?

Tom Gormally: My work is largely very personal in nature, and sometimes autobiographical. A lot of my work is a manifestation and a means of processing events or situations in the world (particularly relating to politics/the environment) that have impacted me emotionally.

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Xavier: Lets talk about your process for a bit. It looks to me like you like to work in metaphor, but with a sense of humor, perhaps akin to someone like Dennis Oppenheim or Bruce Nauman, but with a more personal scope and size. Can you tell us a little bit about the processes that you go through to make a piece, perhaps using a sculpture that you have made in the past or one that you are currently working on. Do you start with the idea or are the materials a starting point for you? This is very exciting to me as a sculptor its been awhile since Ive had a chance to talk to another sculptor about their processes.

Tom Gormally: Thats a great question, thanks! Looking back, Ive found that I tend to work in series that are often inspired by a single idea that can be anything from a metaphor that hits me as I fall asleep, to a book or a crutch found in a second-hand shop.

Typically, after having the idea I start to write about the concept and draw/sketch out ideas. Theres a phrase I like from Japser Johns that Ill paraphrase: Take an object. Do something to it. Then do something else to it; the simplicity of starting from one object or metaphor/idea and modulating it stepwise by just following my intuition clicks for me. For instance, the piece Im currently working on is part of my Fox series, and so is a modulation of the core idea that right now in our country the fox is in the henhouse.

However, for this particular piece, I started with a series of drawings in watercolor which informed one of the first modulations of the core form, that the fox would be partially submerged.

Xavier: That is my favorite Johns quote as well. And is very definitely a guiding principle for my work !

Tom Gormally: Thats fantastic!

Once I get to the drawings, then I think about scale and materials. On this most recent piece, I decided to carve the fox first. All of the foxes in this series have been hand-carved, and so carving the fox first really informs the feel and the scale of the piece. Once I get to the point where I have a polished-enough fox that I can visualize in the scene, I start work on constructing the other elements. Sometimes I need to see the central figure in situ to recognize what does and doesnt excite me about what Ive visualized. Sometimes elements are thrown out, and other times I realize that I need to make additions to get to the visual impact that Id envisioned.

The stacked-elements of Brancusi inform a lot of the structural decisions I make, in adding or subtracting levels to the piece. I try to keep the overall macro level structure of the piece fairly simple, but make the interactions within and between components and levels complex.

Lastly, light elements and internal lighting have always played a big part in my work, and so thinking about how I want light to highlight or shroud certain aspects of the structure and form is an important part of my thinking, particularly when it comes to materials.

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Xavier: Can I get you to speak a little bit more about Brancusi; your relation to him and how it affects the form of your work. You start to go into it and I missed following up on itcould you elaborate, please!

Tom Gormally: One of the things that I always really appreciated about Brancusis work is how he took folk-like elements from Romanian architecture and folk art and reinvigorated these influences through his own modern vision. The results were stacked abstract forms that draw the eye up towards a more dynamic sculptural element at the apex. I am doing that with my work as well. There are geometric forms that I stack (or layer) in my own way, with a carved sculptural form at the apex. These forms lead the eye up from the floor (or sometimes down from the ceiling) to the central element that acts as a focal point for the narrative of the piece.

I wrote papers on Brancusi when I was an undergraduate; I loved his work. One of his famous quotes stays with me, inspiring me to follow his example in being uncompromising with his pursuit and execution of his personal vision. Rodin wanted to hire Brancusi as a studio assistant Brancusi said, an acorn cannot grow beneath a mighty oak.

Despite the opportunity to work under one of the greatest sculptors of his time, Brancusi turned it down because he wanted to maintain the autonomy of his artistic expression, without being influenced by Rodin.

Xavier: That is an excellent point, though I do have to say that I have been lucky enough to take classes. work with and TA for some wonderfully impressive artists from Wayne Thiebaud to Lynn Hershman Leeson and have valued any advice or mentoring that each could give.

Moving right along, I would like to explore further, how metaphor works in your art. When I was in undergraduate school, we had installation artist Robert Irwin talk to us about how, for him art was all about communication and that that meant metaphor. How does language and/or metaphor fit into your work?

Tom Gormally: As far as metaphor, one through-line in my work is that I want the viewer to engage in an exercise in interpretation when theyre looking at my work, and a lot of that is done through metaphor. In addition, I feel that the folk-art aesthetic adds accessibility and provides an entry point so that the viewer can interpret the piece through their own experiences and perspective.

Xavier: Also, along the lines of language, a good amount of your work looks almost like you make stages or frames, upon which you create your statements or sentences. Does that ring true?

Tom Gormally: Yes! This definitely rings true with me. Ive often wanted to create stage sets for a play or a dance, as I feel like the way I work could easily translate to that!

A lot of the time the statements or sentences that are said on those stages end up being the names of the works, or paraphrased at least, to provide a little more room for interpretation.

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Xavier: Do you see your foxes as being like the heroes in your pieces, the ones generating action in the pieces?

Tom Gormally: Thats really interesting, actually. Could you clarify if you mean like prototypical heroes in a mythological sense or protagonists in a narrative sense?

Xavier: Yes, but that would cut off an avenue of discussion. Which or both are you thinking?

Tom Gormally: The foxes are definitely center-stage in these pieces and are the agents generating action, so I would say that theyre a protagonist, but theyre definitely not heroes or heroic they are still the main force of movement, but that force is humorously insidious!

Xavier: Oooh! Sounds awesome! Please explain!

Tom Gormally: I dont want to say anything too explicitly, but this series began in late 2016 following an analogy that came to me while falling asleep: that the FOX was in the henhouse. The fox is kind of a Vaudevillian comically terrible character, whose hijinks are at once horrifying and mesmerizing.

If you look at the figuration of the fox, theres a lot of smirks, winks, and smarminess!

Xavier: Lets talk a little but more about the fox in a different sense. Your work has a kind of Midwest feel to it, reminding me peripherally of folks like Terry Allen who use a good amount of humor in their work. How do you feel that humor works in your art?

Tom Gormally: Funnily enough, I grew up in the midwest and actually showed at the same gallery as Terry Allen when I was in grad school! The Morgan Gallery in Kansas City.

Xavier: That is very funny! I love his work and, though you would never think this about me, I especially love his music! We had a bunch of Montana artists come to my undergraduate school, because Mike Sarich who taught art at UNR was from Montana. I got to meet Terry Allen as an undergraduate and have a few drinks with him and the professorsback in the day!

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Tom Gormally: Humor is one of the most important aspects of my work. Its a fundamental part of my personality and a major way that I identify with my Irish heritage, particularly dark humor, storytelling, and wise-cracking.

A lot of my work comes from processing very intense, serious, and sometimes dark concepts and emotions. The humourous aspects take the edge off of that, and humanize in a similar way to the folk aesthetic that I talked about earlier. Additionally, I use humor as a way of processing and healing and reorienting myself and others around me in my own life.

I feel like, in large part, Irish culture and stories passed on to me in my own life were done by this pivot between serious storytelling and wise-cracking about that same story to lighten some of the impact of what was being conveyed.

Xavier: Any examples from your life or childhood?

Tom Gormally: It was the way that my whole family behaved as I was growing up. Even when what was being relayed was serious, there was always an element of humor. And then when I went to Ireland during the peace process to participate in the Horsehead International Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition, I found that same culture/attitude/style that I had grown up with!

Xavier: Very cool, family and history is very important to understanding who one is. Could you go into how you work with both found objects and things that you sculpt into personal forms. How do those two seemingly, disparate languages work together in your work?

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Tom Gormally: Found objects become the focus of or a part of a work when they initiate a story. Sometimes they sit in my studio for months or years before I look at them and think about how theyre connected to the world, and that connection sparks a dialog between story and form that plays out in the scenes that I conceptualize and create!

Often the found object isnt in it its original form, I transform it to fit it with the story that Im telling and then base the aesthetic of the piece off of my visualization of that story.

Xavier: Do you ever feel as though you know already what it is you need and are just waiting for the objects to show up?

Tom Gormally: No, the process is almost always the other way around!

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Xavier: Cool! How can people find your artwork? Do you have a website?

Tom Gormally: Yes my website is TomGormallySculpture.com.

I also post work in progress regularly on Instagram.

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Interview With PNW Sculptor Tom Gormally! On Foxes, Crutches and the Apocalypse! Our Ten-Year Anniversary Continues! - seattlepi.com