Today we’d like to introduce you to Tom Hoitsma.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I have been making art my entire life. It’s just something I was drawn to from when I was very young. For a variety of reasons, I studied art at a small liberal arts college (Skidmore). After graduation, I worked in SoHo for the Barbara Gladstone Gallery for a couple of years. In 1984, I had the opportunity to work in television and moved to Dallas. I spent 30 years making a variety of educational and documentary television series while also pursuing my art practice. After the pandemic, I decided to focus on my art practice full time.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think we all want to arrive as fast as we can, but that is not how it works for most visual artists. It takes time to develop a visual language. That said, besides almost being killed in a car accident (as a passenger) when I was 30 and getting very sick with hepatitis C when I was 35 (due to a bad blood transfusion after my car wreck), it has been relatively smooth.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
In October 2019, my kids and I learned first-hand a brutal lesson about the climate crisis. Dallas used to see one tornado each year. For the last few years, that number has tripled, and the intensity of the tornados has increased. On October 20, 2019, one of these super tornados ripped through our Dallas neighborhood. With winds up to 140 miles per hour and three-quarters of a mile wide, this tornado literally came right down our street. By some act of God, the tornado jumped over the first five houses on the west end of the street (including my house, which I was in at the time with my kids) but destroyed most of the homes just east of us. We have all seen images of this kind of destruction on television but to walk the neighborhood the next morning and see the destruction with my own eyes was completely surreal and deeply disturbing.
On our walk the morning after the tornado, my then 12-year-old daughter and I bumped into a couple standing in front of their home. It was destroyed. The roof was gone, a few interior walls were standing, but most of the exterior walls were just piles of brick. The couple pointed to an interior white door that was still standing (the exterior walls to that room were gone) and said, “Do you see that white door? We were all huddled behind that door when the tornado ripped the roof off the house. The air was thick with debris flying around, and we all just clutched each other until it finally passed. In front of that door used to be our bedroom (there were no walls standing). We’re so grateful that the four of us made it out without a scratch.”
That made me think about how people are so resilient. Events in our lives can break our hearts, but somehow, we cannot be defeated. Like these sculptures, our hearts get tangled, bruised, and battered but still remain full of hope and joy. We all immerse forever changed from many experiences, but eventually, we are hopeful for the future. It became clear that the twisted metal that was strewn throughout the neighborhood was the perfect metaphor for this life experience.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
My sculpture professor at Skidmore, John Cunningham, was a huge influence. He made me his assistant the first semester of my sophomore year, so I was able to spend many, many hours in the studio. He was a constructivist, and his knowledge of tools and techniques has been a huge benefit. In my junior year, I interned over the summer with Miriam Shapiro, a very famous feminist artist. She challenged me to find my own voice. Finally, Barbara Gladstone, who hired me at 21 and introduced me to the SoHo art scene of the early 80s.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.tomhoitsma.com
- Instagram: Hoitsma_Art
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.hoitsma
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhoitsma/
Image Credits
Michael Carter
