reprage

Tom’s work has always been my Adderall for the arts. When I first discovered his industrial films, it was the breacher bar I needed to break apart a warped art vs science mindset I had inherited from school.

When I was a kid, art was presented as a domain filled with innate skill, blurred edges and intuition. Science, on the other hand, was filled with rules and inherent mechanics. This gave me confidence that, with practice and hard work, it would be something I could eventually understand.

As my education took me closer to the frontiers of science, I started to lose my footing. It became obvious that a fair amount of luck and intuition was needed to navigate the scientific method into the blurry unknown.

Then I found Tom’s work: A space shuttle made from foamcore, a full-scale replica of the Apollo Lunar excursion module. Boomboxes. Waffle bikes. Crisp, clean plywood edges. It wasn’t art vs science at all, they complement one another. They inform and build upon each other.

I had finally found my gateway drug to the world of art and was hooked.

A picture of Tom's breacher bar. Handle is covered in red paracord and it's housed in a plywood case alongside an aluminium cylinder containing of Adderall.

Originally written for the Sachsian Syndicate.

Photo: Ever Gold Projects

Previously: TGIM 1 - Thank god it’s Monday (A short exploration of Fanta Black)

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