Tom Sarver

I continue to make paintings.  This one is

Green Table, 14″x11″, oil and acrylic on panel.

(from 2009 – 2010 series.)

Since I’m back in Pittsburgh after a couple years in the NYC area, I though it would be good to start this blog back up again.  I’m going to review a few of my recent projects and write about shows that I visit.

I just installed a kinetic piece at Mason Gross Galleries at Rutgers.  The piece titled “Snakebird” explores themes of apathy, greed and denial in American culture relative to the rise of world slum populations.  The exhibition, titled “Planet of Slums,” after the book by Mike Davis, is curated by Omar Lopez-Chahoud and LaToya Ruby Frazier.  The show runs October 6 though October 23 and features photography, film, video, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and installation work by over 20 artists.

I made the piece by chopping up a lot of pieces that I no longer cared about and reassembled the fragments adding illustration inspired by newspaper editorials and opinions that I collected on blog sites.

Snakebird, 2010

press:

Art exhibit puts spin on definition of ‘slums’

"Cooking With Sticks"

The term “installation” is starting to become a tired word for me. It seems like every museum, gallery, or art happening in Pittsburgh lately has added the term to their advertising, as if it is something new, or more sophisticated than the everyday art show.

Anyhow, here is a pic of my new work, piece, art, installation, or whatever you would like to call it at the Society for Contemporary Craft in the Strip District. It will be up through January 10, 2009. I think the SCC is a beautiful space, so stop over to check it out if you get a chance.

I currently have an installation up at The Society of Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. The work is a project informed by my interests in the outdoors and is titled “Cooking With Sticks.” It will be on display in the SCC food gallery through January 10th, 2009.

SPECIAL EVENT! On Saturday July 19th, I will be conducting an outdoor cooking demonstration on the sidewalk in front of the SCC at Noon. I will be cooking fish and roasting vegetables. Visitors to this free demonstration may sample the food. The Society of Contemporary Craft is located at 2100 Smallman Street, Pittsburgh, PA.

In 2005, my performances began to happen in front of the puppet stage as I began to experiment with performance art. This project happened over a weekend at the annual Art All Night event in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Lawrenceville. The piece contained a model of the Arctic Circle (made out of a mound of ice) and a model of the Amazon. (made out of vegetables) Throughout the night I made cartoons of politicians and big business executives negotiating ways to modify trade policies to maximize company profits (at the expense of a healthy environment). As that was happening, the model of the Amazon was slowly getting chopped down and the Arctic melted. The water from the melting ice flooded a small model city. The chopped down rain forest of veggies was stir fried and made into appetizers for the executives as they planned to create housing developments on the barren forest site.

I met East Pittsburgher Doug Hill around 2001 when I was working on Craig Street in Oakland. Back then he was making a lot of colored pencil drawings and watercolors of places that were changing in Oakland. (Views that would no longer exist after new buildings were constructed)

A few years back, Doug started making a wide variety of gears and gadgets out of cardboard. I kept in touch with him as I transitioned into The Tom Museum. Not long after I opened, Doug became a regular at the museum, appearing at least once a month to conduct demonstrations for visitors. Doug’s work has caught the attention of people from around the world.

Over the course of the Tom Museum project, I have taught many children’s workshops and visited schools for residency projects. I really enjoyed the way that the children captured memories of my house at a recent elementary school residency.