Tom Giebink
I haven’t spent much time devising rationales for the work
I’ve spent my life making. That
said, I know I’ve been following the same aesthetic thread since I opted into
life as a working artist when I left Middlebury. It comes down to this:
All drawings are shadows of the three-dimensional world; a
flattening out of three-dimensional space into two. What if shadows cast 3D objects back?
The sculptures and installations I’ve made all arise from
that notion. Drawings and paintings;
video productions; interactive software installations; all of my work in one
way or another.
I spent years sitting down outside painting with casein on
paper trying to understand what I was seeing and that was invariably influenced
by being in the middle of it, whatever the weather was, whatever time of day it
was (I got that from Prof. Muirhead.
That was how he wanted us to make our first paintings and it stuck.). I learned a lot about color, line and marking
in general from making a couple of thousands of those. When I was at Midd I worked for Prof. Bumbeck
helping him print some of his editions.
I can’t say enough about how valuable that has been to me. In fact, I adapted the technique of wiping an
intaglio printing plate to a technique I invented to embed pigment and color
glaze in my sculpture in the 50 years since.
Thanks David!
The work I’m showing here cuts
across all the media I’ve worked in.
Since I arrived in Austin, TX in 1976 it’s always been true that I’ve
gotten involved, serially, with emerging media (some would say emerging
technologies). I would develop expertise
in a given medium and make a living doing that work professionally and fuse
that medium into my art work. Video
production, lighting, editing, real & synthetic sound; Performance,
scripting; Dance movement (contact improvisation); Software development,
coding, visual and interactive design.
For me, it’s all been woven together into the same cloth.
For this online show I decided to make some composite images in order to cover breadth of the media territory I’ve worked in rather than I use single object images. I’m also including a link to a YouTube playlist: Link to the YouTube Playlist of my work. I spent nearly two decades as a prime organizer in the Public Access TV movement in Austin and nationally. For those who might be interested here’s a fine documentary on it: Link to the documentary "Everyone's Channel"
Since I moved out of Austin in 2014, I’ve been lucky to have a huge studio here in Bozeman. I’ve the tools and space to finish work on what I now call “Shadow Land”, the center of which is the Anti-Gravity Room. I’m also picking back up a couple of video documentaries I didn’t finish in the era in which I started them. Perseverance and health willing I’ve got my work cut out for me till I kick off this mortal coil.