Fantasy ceramics
Tom Owens — Sculptor
Artist Statement
“So why am I a ceramic 3d cartoonist?
Aside from the brittle fragility, the ceramic medium is quite durable. It doesn’t rust, fade, or stain and can survive buried in archeological sites for millennia… It’s great stuff. And there’s a thrill that comes from combining earth and fire while trying to ignore gravity to create art. And the results aren’t completely under my control. It’s a collaboration with nature.
Like most artists, my inner child drives the process. The primary thrust is an overall goofiness, expressed through anthropomorphic animals or hilariously distorted human figures. But there’s always an underlying dark twist, a reminder that it’s not mere child’s play.
While I’m working, I often create elaborate back stories for the pieces that support the action implied by the finished work. The titles are usually punch lines revealing the meaning of said action, frozen in time. Some works follow the original concept sketch, if there is one, and others don’t. Lots of cartoonists, illustrators, and animators influence my work but the only ceramic artists to have a notable impact on me are the ones I share table space with at the Core Clay studio.
I’ve settled into this artistic groove rather late in life but it’s a groove I’m grateful to inhabit. I never tire of watching people during the instant when they finally realize what they’re really looking at, that moment when confused concern becomes a grin of acknowledgment.”
Artist Bio
Tom Owens is a life long Ohio resident, born in the small North Eastern Lake Erie town of Conneaut and currently living in the large South Western Ohio River city of Cincinnati with his wife and two kids. His more successful adult years have been funded by writing software. His less successful adult years, like his teens, have been squandered playing electric guitar. His childhood was dominated by art.
Born late in 1959, he spent most of the 1960s and maybe half of the 1970s as a quintessential nerdy art kid who got good grades in school as an easy way to keep his mother happy. Drawing, painting, and building things gobbled up the rest of his time. It’s amazing he actually learned to swim and ride a bike because he rarely left the house.
It’s been suggested that Tom found his calling as a ceramic sculptor. The truth is that Tom the Software Guru, Tom the Brilliant Guitarist, and Tom the Puzzling 3d Cartoonist are all the same guy. Intelligence, humor, curiosity, stubbornness, creativity, and general craftiness run through everything he does. He claims his constant obsession with detail keeps him awake at night and cranky during the day, “it’s a life of many blessings.”