About the Artist

Tom Otterness was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1952 and went on to study art at the Art Students League of New York in 1970, and in 1973 he took an independent study program at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Later, in 1977 Tom Otterness became a member of Collaborative Projects, a community of independent artists in New York. Shortly after joining the group, he took a leading role in organizing Colab’s 1980 Times Square Show, which was a huge success and was called “the first avant-garde art show of the ‘80s’” by the Village Voice. Since then Tom Otterness has worked on a variety of other art pieces, including joining a team of his contemporary artists to create a Humpty-Dumpty balloon for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2005. Tom has also completed over three dozen public art commissions in the U. S., as well as many international commissions, which can all be found on his website. Tom Otterness is known as one of America’s most prolific public sculptor, and his work can often be recognized by his sculptures simplistic and cartoonish styles.

About Feats of Strength

(Feats of Strength, 1999, Western Washington University Bellingham, WA, Photo by Yan Wang)

Tom Otterness has created many works of art and pieces of sculptures around the world, but he is best known for his cast bronze sculptures, such as Feats of Strength which is composed of seven bronze figures interacting with rocks at the WWU campus in Bellingham, Washington. These little figures are scattered in the Haskell Plaza. Some of them are placed in the center of the plaza, some are arranged in the side near Arntzen Hall, and one is located near the Biology building on the top of a big sandstone. They are pretty small compared to some of the traditional sculptures. The highest one might be around two feet tall, the shortest one is just a few inches tall.

The contrast of nature and industry is seen in Feats of Strength, as Tom weaves his cast bronze figures seamlessly into the natural surroundings of trees and limestone rocks in the middle of campus. He spent days observing campus life at Western When he was planning the sculpture. The cartoon green figures might depict the students and faculty of WWU, and the daily struggles and team accomplishments that they have every day. The figures have also been thought to represent the various classes of workers from the San Juan Islands in the 1990s.

What happened in the 1990s & possible influences on the artist.

          Economics:

• The period that occurred before the 90s was marked by a strong note of frenzied stock market happenings as the over the top aggressive sales of pieces was a regular occurrence. But in the year of 1991, however, the market crashed spectacularly. Galleries around the globe started shutting their doors due to bankruptcy.
• Internet: the rise of WWWW impacted on our lives hugely. It actually had an influence on the way that artists’ making their work and communicating with their audience.

           Politics:

• a changing geopolitical order showed up, 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union.
• the advent of so-called “identity politics,” a newfound sensitivity to the questions of race, class, and sexuality so long neglected by artists and humanists.

There was a shift in the art world because of the digital revolution and globalization. The artists were expanding their exploration deep into the topic of race, sexuality and multiculturalism. Lots of controversial topics were introduced. “Feats of Strength” was created in 1999, from this work we could get a sense that Tom Otterness concerned about gender and class under capitalism. This is because he portrayed different walks of life by dressing these figures differently. Someone is wearing a suit, someone is wearing a dress, and someone is even naked. It was in line with the art movement then—postmodernism. The artist used this artwork to announce his belief that all humans are equal, it does not matter if you are a man or a woman, and it does not matter what your background is.

Jumping Into The Wonderland

We shared our ideas and gut feelings towards this artwork within our group, when we were preparing our project. One of our group member Yan believes that the artist Tom Otterness actually built a wonderland with these small figures of men and women living in it. And this world Tom Otterness created brings a sense of illusion and fantasy, which is appealing for her. She even wants to join their work to move those big sandstones. As for Paxton, these seven pieces of small bronze sculptures remind him of how kids play and how anything can become a toy and enjoyment for them. Besides, the togetherness, the artist delineates stands out to him, this is because these little people are content lifting rocks together. Even though they are not closely packed together, every statue looks like it belongs to a big family. Moreover, we have learned that the artist’s concern about class under capitalism, race, sexuality from our research on this artwork Feats of Strength, the artist Tom Otterness, and the background story of the artwork. Therefore we blend our feelings about this work in our representation——Jumping Into The Wonderland.

In our work, we focused on making a narrative following Tom Otterness’s cartoonish style. We aimed at creating the wonderland that people and these little bronze figures could live and work together by downsizing one of our group members, inserting elements such as moon and stars inspired by The Little Prince and adding a bit animation. 

Bibliography

Otterness, Tom, and Hilarie Sheets. Tom Otterness: The Public Unconscious. Marlborough Chelsea, 2007.

Otterness. Marlborough, 1997.

Otterness, Tom. The Tables, Tom Otterness.

Otterness, Tom, and Eugenie Tsai. Free Money and Other Fairy Tales. Marlborough Gallery, 2001.

Paoli, Lauryn, and Sarah Ford. “React. Research. Execute!” React Research Execute, 10 Nov. 2016, wp.wwu.edu/wwuart109/2016/11/10/feats-of-strength-tom-otterness/.Otterness, Tom. “Tom Otterness.” Tom Otterness, 2017, www.tomostudio.com/.

DeLong, William. “Tom Otterness Designed New York’s Favorite Subway Sculptures.’”All That’s Interesting, All That’s Interesting, 1 May 2019, allthatsinteresting.com/tom-otterness.

Credits

Content by Yan Wang and Paxton Stump;

Group 11, spring, 2019

Yan Wang

Paxton Stump

Kali Jose