THOMAS SCOON

Volcanoes and lightning can create glass, and the inferno of a modern artist's furnace is but a small microcosm of the overwhelming cauldron that nature can provide. Thomas Scoon's recent work suggests some of these primal forces at work, and he seems everywhere to respect and acknowledge the processes that literally create our planet. Read from top to bottom Scoon's sequence of materials is often stone/glass/stone/glass, the two substances layered like some sedimentary strata on the side of a cliff, Scoon's vignettes in crystal and stone are surprisingly engrossing, with the mysterious and sometimes brooding quality sometimes seen in the efforts of so-called "primitive" cultures.

By James Yood


BIOGRAPHY

1961
  Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin

EDUCATION

1990
  M.F.A. Massachusetts College of Art - Boston, MA

1988
  B.F.A Illinois State University - Bloomington, IL

ARTIST STATEMENT

My sculpture focuses exclusively on the human figure. While abstracting the form, I am able to emphasize the essence of gesture, gender and of other human characteristics. The pieces vary from small-scale figures to my recent life-size sculptures. By pairing or grouping the figures, I attempt to explore familial and generational relationships, which I hope speak to the viewer as both personal narrative and universal construct.

I begin by choosing stones, often found in natural habitats. I frequently visit the same sites over a period of years, as the pieces evolve. I also visit several quarries where I am able to sift through the rubble for stones. I try to gather both the head and the torso stone from the same site for consistency of color and texture.

With the use of wax molds, I am able to cast glass to fit the stones. The glass shapes the rest of the figure, in a very organic sense, much like ice. The translucent quality of the glass is activated best by natural sunlight and in this way the figures are given their spirit or soul. I believe the pieces are contemporary and timeless in the same moment.

By Thomas Scoon

ABOUT

Sometimes there can be a certain geologic logic to glass. Even when cooled and rock solid, even when crystalline and almost ice-like, glass can seem to bear a trace memory of its origin in the heart of the fire, in heat so intense as to be almost unimaginable. Volcanoes and lightning can create glass, and the inferno of a modern artist's furnace is but a small microcosm of the overwhelming cauldron that nature can provide. Thomas Scoon's recent work suggests some of these primal forces at work, and he seems everywhere to respect and acknowledge the processes that literally create our planet. He works with his materials, less interested in transforming them than he is directing them toward an evocative suggestion of the human form. Scoon is only obliquely a figural sculptor; he never makes his materials human, while always accomplishing the more challenging task of making them humane.

This all begins with Scoon's search for stones near his home in New Hampshire. New England, one of the oldest parts of historical America, is also geologically an older part of our continent, its boulders often weathered by eons, imbued somehow with a kind of experiential character that speaks of the breadth of eternity. Scoon is drawn to those stones that somehow resemble parts of the human body--the girth of a torso, the oval shape of the head, etc.--and he harvests the very rocks that earlier New Englanders tossed away to pile into stone walls. He rarely alters these stones, preferring to step aside and let their allusive quality come through, inviting us to discover human traces where we know they cannot exist. Glass is cast, often in seemingly roughhewn and translucent chunks, to form the snug-fitting transition zones between Scoon's rocks, or as the bases that permit the stones to stand erect, making them vertical, upright, like impassive and totemic sentinels of some secret we will never fully decode.

Read from top to bottom Scoon's sequence of materials is often stone/glass/stone/glass, the two substances layered like some sedimentary strata on the side of a cliff. But, though cold to the touch, Scoon's assemblages still echo with their igneous source; this is the stuff of magma and the core. And it is surprising with what economy Scoon is able to use these materials to indicate a wide range of nuanced human activity. These stones and chunks of glass begin to evoke family units, small interpersonal dramas, generational play, even gendered behavior. This too is of a core, in this case of a fundamental humanity, how we will inexorably read and respond to the personality implied in the turn of a shoulder, the inclination of a head, the shift of a hip, even when that shoulder, head, and hip are never more than rock and glass. Scoon's vignettes in crystal and stone are surprisingly engrossing, with the mysterious and sometimes brooding quality sometimes seen in the efforts of so-called "primitive" cultures. He taps into our inexhaustible curiosity about our own kind, and no matter how far removed from optical reality they might be presented, our identification with humanity seems as ancient and permanent as stone itself.
James Yood

James Yood teaches contemporary art theory and criticism at Northwestern University and writes regularly for Artforum, GLASS, and American Craft magazines.

SELECTED MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS

2000
  Millennium Glass: An International Survey, Kentucky Art & Craft Foundation, Louisville, KY

1996
  Nine Artists, Nine Visions, Decordova Museum & Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

1994
  3rd Masterworks of Contemporary Gallery, New York Experimental Glass Workshop, New York, New York, U.S.A.

1993
  Glassforms, Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

1991
  Studio Glass, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A.

1989
  New Glass Review, Corning Glass Museum, Corning, New York, U.S.A.

1988
  New Glass Review, Corning Glass Museum, Corning, New York, U.S.A.

1987
  Young Glass International, Ebeltoft International Glasmuseum, Ebeltoft, Denmark

1985
  New Glass Review, Corning Glass Museum - Corning, New York, U.S.A.

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

ART IN THE EMBASSY PROGRAM, U.S. State Department
DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS, Detroit, Michigan
EBELTOPFT INTERNATIONAL GLASS MUSEUM, Ebeltoft, Denmark
NORTHWATER CAPITAL MANAGEMENT INC., Toronto, Ont
TALISKER CORPORATION, Toronto, Ont
NEWQUANT CAPTITAL, New York, NY
KEYPORT INSURANCE CO., Boston, MA

GRANTS & AWARDS

1999
  New Hampshire Artist Fellowship/ NEA Sculpture

1988
  Whirlpool Figurative Sculpture Award
  Marshall D. Pitcher Award

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

1991-2004
  Independent Studio Artist

2003
  University of NH, Adjunct Instructor, Sculpture Dept.

1989-1990
  Massachusetts College of Art, Adjunct Instructor, sculptural Glass Casting

1984
  Pilchuck Glass School, Teaching Assistant, GlassBlowing