With a background in performing martial arts — with comedy — around the world, in tv and movies, Tom was facing a leg fracture following two hip replacements from jiu-jitsu training. He began using his printmaking and art making tools while struggling with the stillness of recovery. He set out to complete one thousand portraits. In martial arts completing one thousand reps of an exercise gives one proper entry-not mastery-into understanding a skill.
After watching a friend blow glass in his shed, curiosity became a 26-year-long career path of working in glass. As the Boise art scene has developed and strengthened over the years, Filip has created a community around the studio space, Boise Art Glass, he runs. He has 14 employees, most of who teach glassblowing to the public. He sells glass pieces out of the studio gallery, at local markets and in stores nationwide.
Ace gathers and accepts donations of materials to rescue them from landing in the waste stream. She’s at the point now, though, that she has to turn down many donations because of studio capacity. In her pursuit of space within her art, she has scaled her paintings larger and larger. The subject matter of her paintings is a blend of the temporal qualities of both nature and time spent with friends. She creates an abstracted version from her memories of those moments, resulting in a mysterious ghostly rendering of figures and nature scenes in house paint. She prefers creating suggestions rather than clearly defined colors and shapes. She allows the paint to drip and run after applying it, letting the material do what it likes. The gestural marks are loose compared to the small stitches she perfected in her previous life as a professional quilter. It parallels the shifting between micro and macro one can see in her paintings.
I think art is important because it's a way to kind of reach down inside someone and pluck a chord. It's so hard to answer. I think that the world in general can become quite monotonous and almost generic. I think that we've experienced that more and more as we've moved into modern times. Maybe not. I don't know, it's hard to say.
I think that being messy and having fun is the number one best part of doing art. Where you don't have to think about everything you do to create a painting to make it perfect and correct. Sometimes I feel like I'm so limited by that. Where if you don't perform the correct steps then you might mess up an entire painting.
I think people always say, find your niche, and that worked for me, but I have several niches. My first niche was the illustration thing, which I learned on the job being around other artists. And then it's a good idea to get a degree, just in case you want to teach. I know it's really competitive, but if you're really good, you'll get the job. Believe in yourself. Be inventive, innovative. Don't just follow what everybody else is doing.
I think art is important because it captures abstract concepts that we become detached from that are intrinsic to our meaning and our biology and evolution as creatures. I think it attaches us to those abstract patterns of behavior that are beneficial to us in life. I think music does that. I think visual art does that in different ways. But I think if you did away with that, life would be too rigorous and logical.
I enjoy the teaching aspect of it and showing people something they've never seen before. It feels good to show them. I had an 85 year old lady cry in here the other day because she was so happy about finally doing it. There's not a not a lot of things that you can show an 85 year old person that makes that big of a difference to them. So it feels pretty good.
The beautiful thing is, it doesn't matter what image you choose, it's always going to come out different. It's never going to be like the image, you know. Mosaic changes so drastically that even the most basic image can be turned into something that's pretty. Because again, mosaics have these design elements that you lose in painting and stuff like that, like joints and shaping. You can take something that's basically a coloring book image, and if it's done with the right palette and done with the right style, man, you can take something like a starfish, which is seemingly pretty basic, and with the use of color and things like that, you can turn it into something spectacular.
When I make a piece of art, it's first and foremost, it's because I want to make it. And frankly, I don't care if people like it or not, it's for myself. But on the other hand, I can also tell stories, I can show my inner feelings sometimes through the art. It's a process that I just enjoy so much. The creative process, like for most artists I think is the main goal.
Art is really something that, there's just so much out there. You have tattoo artists, you have painters, you have sculptors, you have people that make giant things that are multi stories high and then you have me making a little deck of cards. There's so much to it and as much as everybody wants to express themselves and their individuality with tattoos and hairstyles and things like that, you walk into a house that is plain walled and it just seems empty. You start putting art up and it really starts bringing life into everything.
I think that art is a basic human need. We as a species have had art since we stood up straight. There is no culture in the history of humanity that has had no art, which makes me believe that it is a basic human need, which is really the thing that separates us from the apes, which I don't know, they might have art too.
We express things that other people don't think about expressing, or they don't take the time to. To give voice to people and ideas and things that don't get addressed because not everyone has the luxury to make things or the time or the money, or even the knowledge. So it's kind of a responsibility to be that voice. And that's how I think of it. It's not a game, It's not just playing for me, it's work that I want to have grounded in concepts and a message.
I think engaging in any kind of art making is, on some level, just a way of knowing, but also a way of being. So I think it can help one make sense of their world, their existence, you know, to create meaning in your life. And hopefully that experience gets communicated to others through your work. Ideally it is, I think, ultimately about connecting and demanding in a way that demands something of an audience or another individual./
We met each other right here on this property 30 plus years ago. I was a home builder for many years and this kind of evolved into something that we could do together after I retired. That was when Kat started making the tile, and as you can see, this is no longer my shop, this is now Rocky Canyon Tile's shop. I've been shoved out the back door kind of but it's just great. I mean, we have a wonderful relationship and we are really enjoying sharing this. She's the artist, I'm the Muse if you will.
When I was younger, I would go hiking a lot and pick up rocks. I definitely have boxes of rocks at my house. But I would always find interest in the little things that are sort of overlooked and the small details. I mean we're in the gem state so it's perfect. When we're in the mountains I'm focusing on the quartz that's growing naturally and it has this lichen and moss on it. Or the high desert terrain, I really just find [inspiration] from all around me and try to incorporate it into my work.
