WCIAA Member Biographies
David Lobdell
Born 1958 in Lafayette, Louisiana. He received his undergraduate degree in sculpture in 1979 from the University of Southwestern Louisiana and his M.F.A. in 1982 from the University of Notre Dame. He worked for a decade in foundries, potteries and as a commissioned artist before taking a full time teaching position. He has taught at New Mexico Highlands University since 1991 and currently serves as fine arts coordinator in the Department of Communications and Fine Arts. NMHU holds the Iron Tribe Exhibit biannually since 2001. He is interested in the relationship between ceramics, casting and ritual.View the Iron Tribe website: www.nmhu.edu/irontribe
Tobias Flores
I was born in Flagstaff, Arizona in 1971. I have been making art since I was very young. My mother and father encouraged creativity in many ways. My mother could cook, crochet and create macramé owls. My father could fix the cars, make things from wood, write and tell stories and dance until the sun came up. My brother could draw spaceships. I studied printmaking, drawing and sculpture in San Diego receiving a BA from San Diego State University in 2000. I then studied sculpture and blacksmithing at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale receiving a MFA in 2003. I now live and work in Hays, Kansas with my wife, Libby and my two boys, Cooper and Oscar. I have been teaching sculpture at Fort Hays State University since 2006.
My art is: mostly sculpture these days, objects, sometimes conceptually based and sometimes formal, objects that tell stories or that are just for looking at, sometimes made of cast iron, sometimes steel, usually heavy and humorous, sometimes made of wood or aluminum, ornamental or functional or both, usually not very colorful, mostly made by hand, likely made with use of duct tape, wire, hot-glue and a sharpie, sometimes depicting humorous accounts of friends or family, best made on a full stomach, blurring the boundaries between the hand made and the mass produced, always made with a smile or a grin.
Tom Fox (1961- )
I was born and raised in Chicago Illinois. My grandmother was a welder. I finished high school and went to work in the construction and steel industries. I hit the road west in 1981. I settled in San Diego California. Back then it was a different place. I’ve earned a few AA degrees, a BA in applied design and a MFA in sculpture from San Diego State University. During the AA and BA years I worked full time in the construction, transportation, academic, and research science industries.
My folks forged examples of the importance of honesty, reliability, fairness, and hard work carried out smartly. My uncles and some of our neighbors were gear heads. In the Midwest horsepower loves summertime, and so did we. I went to the drag strip on a regular basis with chief gear head Louie Miller. He introduced physics and chemistry into the context of drag racing. This was fascinating linkage that would never leave my mind.
Before I could drive I would often take the train downtown. Walking around, I admired the lake, the architecture, and the vast holdings of public art the city had to offer. I took many hours for myself on the grounds, and in the Museum of the Chicago Art Institute. I was regularly exposed to the work of, among others: Westerman, Smith, Serra, and Brancusi. Calder was in several locations downtown, and Pablo Picasso at the Daily plaza. I’ve been influenced by this art and the attitudes of the artists.
The art I make surveys what Artists do. As I investigate, I find I am the subject and the researcher. It’s kind of like a cerebral look into a mirror. I am articulating things that I am familiar with, or becoming familiar with. Working within my means, I prefer to partner with the material and let it partially assume direction; embracing chance and the creative force of material. My work can be linked to outsider, folk, performance, process, and funk art. My work best fits into the fine visual art fissure genre known as the contemporary cast iron movement.
Process is important to my work in that it promotes a view of more than the final art object. There is so much that goes into making art that is never seen, or that is destroyed, or cast aside. Rarely does the perceptual finality of the creative act encompass the parts that make up the whole. All of what goes into the work is what gives it true value, authority, accuracy, and authenticity.
“Repositories for memories” is the most efficient way to describe my work. The work acts as a visual metaphor for memory; changing with time, a whole comprised of a collection of fragments. Emphasis ranging in the recollection of details each time the memory is tickled into the minds eye impacts how we define memories. Employing fragmented but common imagery stretched from its normal context; layered, visual points of access are offered to the viewer. I intend to reach a broad range of visual art appreciators, newcomers and seasoned alike, I feel there is something there for everyone.
Currently I teach classes in subject matter allied to sculpture at Grossmont Community College in El Cajon CA; I also serve as the technician in our state of the art sculpture facility. I have been teaching visual arts classes at the UCSD Crafts Center in La Jolla for several years. I continue to make art, and have been busy exhibiting work around the U.S. Support your local artists and speak to them directly about there work as often as you can.
Ashley Hope Carlisle
Ashley Hope Carlisle is currently an artist and Associate Professor of Art in Sculpture at the University of Wyoming. She has held this position for the past 8 years and has created art in the form of sculpture and drawing for the past 16 years. As an artist, Ashley has been the recipient of the ISC Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award, has exhibited all over the south and east coast, New Mexico, Colorado, Italy, London, was chosen as a Fellowship Artist Grant Recipient by the Wyoming Arts Council for 2007, and will participate in the Jentel Artist Residency program in July 2011. Ashley is originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, but has comfortably found the west to be her home away from home. She resides in Laramie Wyoming with her husband David Jones, and their son Dylan Elijah. More at www.ashleyhopecarlisle.com
David Jones
David Jones, originally from Augusta, Georgia, received his BFA in sculpture from the University of Georgia in 2000. For the following year he resided in Birmingham, Alabama where he worked in the Sloss Metal Arts Artist-in-Residency program casting iron before going on to pursue his masters degree. In 2004 he received his MFA in sculpture from the University of Tennessee and then moved west to Laramie, Wyoming with his wife who is an assistant professor in sculpture at the University of Wyoming. David currently resides in Laramie where he works as a Collections Preparator for the University of Wyoming Art Museum as well as an adjunct professor for the art department there.
Rian Kerrane
Born in Galway, Ireland in 1968, Kerrane received her BA in Fine Arts Degree from the University of Ulster at Belfast. She relocated to the United States in 1994, and earned her MFA from the University of New Orleans in 1997. Currently residing in Denver, Colorado, Kerrane is Assistant Professor and Area Head for the sculpture program at the University of Colorado Denver. Rian is an advocate for the arts and believes that art and education are uniquely associated. Her primary interests lie in sculpture and multi-media installation. Her work can be seen online at www.riankerrane.com
Brad Allen
Having grown up in southern Oklahoma, Brad acquired an appreciation for all things rural. Storm shelters, chickens, lean-to barns, trailer homes, dirt roads, and parts cars are part of this vernacular. Now an Associate Professor of Art at The University of Montana in Missoula, MT, he is engaged with a community, in fact a small city, that no matter the population, will always be rural at it’s core. The focus of this research centers on domestic spaces and our ability/inability to distinguish one place from another. Brad received a B.A. degree from Southeastern Oklahoma State University in 2001 and an M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale in 2005. Both degrees were in Sculpture, but Brad maintains an open practice that at times includes painting, photography, and most recently CNC technologies. He has been the Sculpture Division Coordinator at UM for 6 years.