TRACY TOMKO
After attending the Art Institute of Colorado for Industrial Design, I have spent my time working as a Sculptor and Master Maker/Fabricator for companies such as Vestas Wind Systems, U.S. Paralympics, NASA, Warner Bros., Nickelodeon, LEGO, Fisher Price, Friends With You, Nike, REI, Guess, and more.
Traversing my way through adjacent industries has increased my knowledge of materials and processes like a long, thorough apprenticeship and has informed my personal work more than expected. With the desire to sculpt large comes the task of procuring materials, space to work, and storage for completed pieces.
These obstacles are still the greatest challenge to my personal work, but I have been fortunate in gaining experience through industrial opportunities and corporate contracts. Regular use of CNC machines, molding and casting for tooling, composites, and vacuum forming techniques have influenced my design work as much as traditional methods for art making, such as carving, drawing, and painting.
The collaborative efforts required to design, manufacture, and market a product sparked the desire to found the artist collective Pangloss Gravitron, with the thought that the right mix of skill sets and cross-pollination of ideas could lead our members to bold experimentation. For me, the experience has been invaluable.
In my artwork, I place imagery from memories and daydreams in a world where music and thought mutate the living into a new vibrancy. I work to describe what my nostalgia looks like as imagination and time morph my recollection.
Having been influenced by books about scientific experiments that seem to prove that plants are sentient beings, they play some of my main characters. I am intrigued by the profound nature of symbiotic relationships between different species, with youth, metamorphosis, and play being themes throughout.
Recent sculptures incorporate movement through methods of human propulsion and performance and speak to ideas about dormant instincts, and isolation versus interaction and inclusion.
