Tom Joyce

Tom Joyce (born 1956) is a sculptor and MacArthur Fellow known for his work in forged steel and cast iron. Using skills and technology acquired through early training as a blacksmith, Joyce addresses the environmental, political, and social implications of using iron in his work. Exhibited internationally since the 1980s, his work is included in 30-plus public collections in the U.S. and abroad. Joyce works in Santa Fe, New Mexico producing sculpture, drawings, prints, photographs, and videos that reference themes of iron in the human body, iron in industry, and iron in the natural world.

Early life and career Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1956, the oldest of four siblings, Joyce attributes accompanying his father on summer archeological excavations conducted for the University of Oklahoma in the 1960s as a significant influence toward choosing a life of working with his hands. When his family moved to El Rito in Northern New Mexico in 1970, at age 14 Joyce began an informal apprenticeship with neighbor Peter Wells, a letterpress printer and blacksmith. Joyce learned to handset type on foot-operated 19th century printing presses and was taught the rudiments of hand forging while assisting Wells on the restoration of historic printing equipment for the Museum of New Mexico's Print Shop and Bindery. At 16, after three summers of working with Wells, Joyce was offered the blacksmith shop when Wells relocated his printing business, the former Sunflower Press. Joyce quit high school to devote himself full-time to learning the trade and developed a classically oriented curriculum of studying historic ironwork in the storage collections of New Mexico's many museums. He supported himself through a wide range of commissions from farmers, ranchers, builders, architects, designers, and other artists.

Throughout the 1990s, Joyce gradually reduced the number of commissions to focus more exclusively on series of work for galleries, including folded bowls based on formal geometric proportions, wall pieces made from remnant material accumulated from his previous commission works, and sculpture incorporating plaster, books, newspaper, wood and iron. In 1996, eighty works of art were exhibited in a mid-career retrospective, Tom Joyce: Twenty Years, organized by the National Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, the first major survey of the artist's work.

In 2001, Joyce began exploratory working relationships with several forging and casting facilities to realize sculpture and drawings on a larger scale. In an ongoing series of work titled Sotto Voce, alluding to the hidden origins of the material he utilizes, Joyce conceptually references the part industrial blacksmiths perform within the current era since the 19th century industrial revolution.

Working hands-on in various industrial settings, multi-ton remnants from parts being manufactured for multinational corporations, government agencies, and military forces around the world are forged into sculptures that appear at first as soft as clay. Cutting, folding and eroding the material transforms what were once semi-recognizable shapes, into sculptures that refer to the parent material's current use, wherever it may be employed in the world.

Works

Exhibitions Exhibiting internationally since 1981, Joyce's work has been shown at the National Museum Cardiff; Stadt Galerie, Lünen, Germany; Graf-Zeppelin Haus, Friedrichshafen, Germany; Exposición Central, Guadalajara, Mexico; Lounais-Suomen Käsi-ja Taideteollisuusoppilaitos, Mynämäki, Finland; Steiglitz Museum of Applied Arts, Moscow, Russia; and Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France. New York, New York; Museum of Arts and Design; Washington, DC; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; New Mexico Museum of Art; Luce Foundation Center for American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum; Mint Museum; National Metal Museum; Museum of Fine Arts; Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. 2011 - United States Artists Windgate Fellow 2009 - Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts 2007 - Artist of the Year, Santa Fe Gallery Association 2006 - Distinguished Artist of the Year Award, Rotary Foundation for the Arts 2002 - John Michael Kohler Art/Industry Residency

Honors 2014 - Honorary Doctorate, Santa Fe University of Art and Design 2009 - Commissioned to design and execute the MacArthur Foundation Award for International Justice awarded to Richard J. Goldstone 2008 - Commissioned to design and execute the inaugural MacArthur Foundation Award for International Justice awarded to Kofi Annan 2007 - Featured in the PBS television documentary series, Craft in America 2007 - 21st Century Luminarias and Legacy Project, New Mexico Community Foundation 1989 - Highest Honorary Fellowship into the Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths, London, England