Tom Joyce

Tom Joyce (born 1956) is a sculptor and MacArthur Fellow known for his work in forged steel and cast iron. Using skills and technology acquired through early training as a blacksmith, Joyce addresses the environmental, political, and social implications of using iron in his work. Exhibited internationally since the 1980s, his work is included in 30-plus public collections in the U.S. and abroad. Joyce works from studios in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and since 2012, in Brussels, Belgium, producing sculpture, drawings, prints, photographs, and videos that reference themes of iron in the human body, iron in industry, and iron in nature. Early life and career Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1956, the oldest of four siblings, Joyce attributes accompanying his father on summer archeological excavations conducted for the University of Oklahoma in the 1960s as a significant influence toward choosing a life of working with his hands. Joyce stated in a 2008 lecture at the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University in Chicago: "As a pre-teen adolescent, unearthing disparate shards of once complete objects, made from diverse materials, and attempting to visualize the whole form from fragments, has instructed my practice as an artist to the present day." When his family moved to El Rito in Northern New Mexico in 1970, at age 14 Joyce began an informal apprenticeship with neighbor Peter Wells, a letterpress printer and blacksmith. Joyce learned to handset type on foot-operated 19th century printing presses and was taught the rudiments of hand forging while assisting Wells on the restoration of historic printing equipment for the Museum of New Mexico's Print Shop and Bindery. At 16, after three summers of working with Wells, Joyce was offered the blacksmith shop when Wells relocated his printing business, the former Sunflower Press. Joyce quit high school to devote himself full-time to learning the trade and developed a classically oriented curriculum of studying historic ironwork in the storage collections of New Mexico's many museums. He supported himself through a wide range of commissions from farmers, ranchers, builders, architects, designers, and other artists. In 1977 Joyce moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, establishing a larger studio to design and produce contemporary objects for homes, architecture, and public art. He initiated an apprenticeship program in 1979 that offered training to students from the U.S. and abroad.