Tom Otterness
| Tom Otterness | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 1952 Wichita, Kansas |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Sculpture |
 "Life Underground" by Tom Otterness on YouTube, Metropolitan Transportation Authority; January 13, 2010 |
Tom Otterness (born 1952) is an American sculptor best known as one of America’s most prolific public artists. Otterness's works adorn parks, plazas, subway stations, libraries, courthouses and museums in New York City—most notably in Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City and Life Underground in the 14th Street – Eighth Avenue New York City Subway station—and other cities around the world. He contributed a balloon (a giant upside-down Humpty Dumpty) to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In 1994 he was elected as a member of the National Academy Museum.
His style is often described as cartoonish and cheerful, but also political. His sculptures allude to sex, class, money and race. These sculptures depict, among other things, huge pennies, pudgy characters in business suits with moneybag heads, helmeted workers holding giant tools, and an alligator crawling out from under a sewer cover. His aesthetic can be seen as a riff on capitalist realism.
Known primarily as a public artist, Otterness has exhibited in exhibitions in locations across the United States and internationally, including New York City, Indianapolis, Beverly Hills, the Hague, Munich, Paris, Valencia and Venice. His studio is located in Gowanus, Brooklyn, in New York City.
Otterness studied at the Art Students League of New York in 1970 and at the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1973. He was an active member of the artists' group Colab (Collaborative Projects) from its inception in 1977, and was involved in punk visual art, notably exhibiting in the Punk Art Exhibition in Washington DC, 1978.
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