Biography
Tom Bartel grew up on the Erie shores of Cleveland, Ohio and is known for his disturbing and humorous fragmented figures that take cues from a “shotgun blast” of influences ranging from antiquity to popular culture. He received his BFA from Kent State University and his MFA from Indiana University-Bloomington.
Tom has lectured, conducted workshops and exhibited extensively throughout the United States and internationally. His work is included in numerous public and private collections and he has received Individual Artist Fellowships from the Pennsylvania arts council, the Kentucky Arts Council and the Ohio Arts Council.
He has numerous publications to his credit, including American Craft, Ceramics Monthly, Clay Times, Ceramics Art and Perception as well as many other periodicals and books.
Bartel is currently a Professor and Ceramics Chairperson at Ohio University in Athens, Oh.
Artist Statement
The figure has been a potent symbol and charged subject since antiquity, and continues to be an appropriate vehicle to ask some of life’s most challenging questions. I believe creating images of or depictions about ourselves can be attributed to a primal need to ensure we survive or to simply tell important stories about what it means to be human. As a result, I am confident that this subject will continue to hold our interest for a very long time.
My work takes cues from a “shotgun blast” of influences ranging from antiquity to popular culture and is constructed to refer to both the body and also charged, stylized, surrogates for the body such as dolls, toys, and figurines. The questions that arise from this cultural mishmash fuel my creative practice. I am interested in both the fragmentation and simplification of human form, especially how this decision encourages, if not requires, the viewer to participate with the work. Within this context, I view that which is absent as significant as that which is present. Furthermore, I use the human condition as a point of departure where themes related to gender, rites of passage, fertility and mortality are constant “threads” within my creative practice.
I see our skin as having the same story-telling potential as the ceramic surfaces I develop. Ultimately, I view these “marks” as having the capacity to be both formally beautiful and to suggest changes that have taken place over time. Surface patterns are also used to blur the line between where clothing ends and skin begins, where the concepts of mask, identity, disguise, and transformation are fundamental to my concerns. Throughout our life our appearance slowly and inevitably changes; in the process our skin records this story.