Christopher Thomson

Rust and Orange Bloom

2025

It was the tumult of the sixties that compelled me to drop out of Swarthmore College, move “back to the land” and become an intuitive artist. I believed that if we were to survive a...

It was the tumult of the sixties that compelled me to drop out of Swarthmore College, move “back to the land” and become an intuitive artist. I believed that if we were to survive a...

It was the tumult of the sixties that compelled me to drop out of Swarthmore College, move “back to the land” and become an intuitive artist. I believed that if we were to survive a...

It was the tumult of the sixties that compelled me to drop out of Swarthmore College, move “back to the land” and become an intuitive artist. I believed that if we were to survive a...

In 1914, a group of intrepid young men set forth into the northern wilderness with the ambition to document the uncharted territory of the Canadian collective unconscious. Their medium was that of sketchbooks and paint, and with these they rendered a vast and previously unknowable landscape into a tangible national identity. One could call their distinct style picturesque, as it cohered to many of the attributes prescribed by 18th century thinker William Gilpen – for capturing nature so as to make it both palatable and empowering for the viewer. During the romantic period in Europe, certain visual tropes emphasized the beauty of the natural landscape despite the rapid advancements of industrialism. As such, the picturesque, when applied properly, enabled the viewer to apprehend and revel in the vastness of change and opportunity with which they were presently confronted. It is at a similar juncture that we contemplate the works of contemporary sculptor and installation artist Shayne Dark, who’s large scale arborescent schemes present a striking encapsulation of both the magnitude as well as the limits of our natural resources. In an age where the re-assessment of our modes of production and consumption has become a main constituent of our identity, his work serves as a potent reminder of this position’s precarity. One piece resembling a cluster of branches, for example, balances in a tenuous fashion, relying on the equal distribution of weight among all its parts to stay upright. In another work, the boughs extend upwards from a base so small it threatens to tip over. As opposed to the romantic and idealized conceptions of a nature as realized in the compositions of the Group of Seven, Dark, by working in the industrial material of hot forged steel, acknowledges the imprint of the human hand on our surroundings. As art critic and theorist Rosalind Krauss...

"Navigator" Tabletop Sculpture by Kevin Barrett Aluminum, automotive paint Barrett is noted for creating unique, rhythmic, abstract indoor and outdoor sculpture and wall reliefs. ...

Born in 1974 in Westfield, Massachusetts, David Colton began his career as an artist while attending the University of Colorado in Boulder. Heavily influenced by the rise of graffiti in America throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he chose to create his own twist on the movement with sculpture. Using glass as his chosen medium, Colton is widely recognized by his peers for the distinct organic style he has developed since he first started in 1995. Recent accolades include being featured in The New York Times Magazine and the Corning Museum of Glass’s annual peer-reviewed journal New Glass Review in 2017. Notable exhibitions include the Architectural Digest Design Show with Chesterfield Gallery...

Totem (medium) is a sculpture by French contemporary artist Frédérique Domergue. The sculpture is made with oak slat, polished gunmetal-finish steel and oxidized steel on the sculpte...