HAAnevada: February 2015

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Old work! Or any way, some of what got me rolling.

This body of work was called "Talking about people and things." I started this body of work as a means for expanding the form and surface of the pot--wheel thrown pots that is. My aim here was to transcend mere pottery and begin to build sculptures from wheel thrown parts, and to develop a glazing style that was dynamic, colorful, and controllable. While I look back on this body of work as ultimately successful, as a stepping stone, I came to understand the huge flaw in my approach. I was foolishly trying to deny that they were pots! The big step up this work gave me was this: the nature of a pot, as a cylindrical sort of form, is hugely dynamic in terms of presence, perspective, and viewership. So, they sure as shit are pots, and that is fine!

Well hello there and welcome to my little armpit in the world.

Well hello there, and welcome to my little armpit in the world.

Artist Biography

Thomas A. Drakulich was born and raised in Reno, Nevada. He attended Truckee Meadows Community College and the University of Nevada, Reno where he received his AA in Art History and his BA in Criminal Justice. During his undergraduate studies, Tom began to explore the wheel-thrown vessel as a means for creating large form sculptures. His works interweave figurative, narrative, and abstract elements that relate to both his personal ideologies and aesthetic interests. Tom is currently working on his Masters Degree in Fine arts at UNR.

Artist Statement

In my art practice, I take a visceral approach to presenting the idea that we exist in this world as fleeting agents, relentlessly tied to the earth and to our mortality. My work begins with the play between dynamic elements within their respective environments, and it ends as a presentation of the way that my memory, perspective, and history effectively shape and relate my views on the human condition and the world around me. My work exists in the in-between and in the enigma: seeking to play upon the present that exists in absence. I constantly interweave a visual language that is both familiar to the mind, and entirely obscure. Each work becomes a series of action and contemplation. I capture and then expand upon moments of my creative spontaneity to synthesize situations, wherein, the living and the dead exist collectively as fleeting agents within a greater static context—be it a landscape or a contrived human tradition. Mortality and the earth are the dominant themes in my work. I use these themes, both, to relate a sense of place and perspective to the viewer, and to explore specific aspects of the human condition.