Meeting: December 5, 2008
Guest artist: Tom Jenkins
Tom Jenkins grew up in Colorado in the late 1950s riding horses, motorcycles, and hot rods. He says his first real art making was in the form of pin-striping and painting flames on friends’ cars and motorcycle tanks. He went to the University of Colorado on a gymnastics scholarship were he majored in art. After college he taught high school art and coached gymnastics for three years before going back to earn his MFA in studio art.
Moving to LA in the 1970s he became involved in the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA) were he served on the board of directors for a number of years. Tom’s work at this time was kinetic and sound sculptures. These sculptures were presented in the form of installations and sound performances. In the 1980s he was represented by the Bornstein gallery were he showed paintings of environmental destruction and decay. These paintings were in high gloss enamel paint on metal and plastic surfaces (referring back to the days of hot rod painting).
His recent work consists of large non-objective canvases in which the imagery is created by using many of the kinetic sculptures and other mechanical devices to create marks on the canvas which are then accentuated and painted in acrylics and oil. The sound sculptures have evolved into musical instruments used in the performance of songs and stories. Tom is presently teaching at Santa Monica College.
Download Tom Jenkin’s Resume (PDF)
