Male

My name's Tom. I'm a full-time tattooer, single, no kids. Part-time student, painting and sculpting at Humboldt State University (I like the place enough that I don't want to leave!!!). I read a LOT, and listen to music as the soundtrack to my life. I paint every day, mostly in oil, but sometimes in watercolors. I do sculpture in ceramics and bronze(!!!).

I transferred as a Junior to Humboldt State University and have been here since July of 2004. I have two majors- Studio Art (Painting) and Art History, with an Anthropology minor (Physical/Paleo focus), so I'm pretty busy here at school, although I take time to enjoy life, the people in it, and to go for a walk in the redwoods at least once a week. Officially finished with my BA requirements for both Studio Art and Art History, but I've put official graduation off until the fall, since I don't want to give up the studio space I have as part of the Honors Painting program at Humboldt State.

I've been working in the sculpture lab this last year, making slip-casting molds, sculpting in concrete (over Styrofoam and wire armatures- all styrofoam is waste that would otherwise have gone in a land-fill). This last semester however, I've been working in welded steel and cast bronze- the mold I built for casting in porcelain slip is also usable for casting wax models for the bronze-casting process ("lost-wax"). I've been working with the same form I've hand-built in clay in the past (looks a bit like the Venus of Willendorf), and I've poured 9 pieces which will be part of a large single "sculpture". The bronze is wonderful to work with, but it's a dirty, time-consuming job, and it's taken a LOT of what little spare time I have to get these things poured, detailed, and whatnot, and to apply the various patinas I want on them- from what I think of as "ancient artifact green", which is a cupric-oxide patina, to chocolate brown like Art Nouveau Tiffany lamps and sculpture, put on with a torch and a solution of "liver of sulfur".

I LOVE Humboldt due to north coast wilderness close by, and the people actually seem to understand the concept of Peace. I lived up by Yosemite for most of the 90s. I am a practicing Pagan/Heathen, follow no dogma or doctrine, have a shamanic practice, and teach some meditation, guided meditation, and various aspects of spirituality practice. There's also an amazing percentage of the population here who are intelligent, spiritual, compassionate, environmentally aware AND conscientious (unlike the rest of the world I know where most of that is mere window-dressing for self-absorbed materialism). I don't ever want to leave.