About

Tom Joyce

Photograph by C Christopher Sturman

Biography

Formally trained as a blacksmith, artist Tom Joyce is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost practitioners in the field for his early contributions to the art and science of forging iron. Apprenticing as a teenager in the early 1970s, and now working from studios in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Brussels, Belgium on forged and cast iron sculptures, drawings, photographs, videos and mixed media installations, Joyce continues to examine the environmental, political, and historical implications of using iron in his work. Incorporating industrially forged remnants and byproducts of large scale manufacturing, Joyce's sculptures reference this material's former life as an indispensable component in industries, polities, and in communities throughout the world.

Joyce was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2003; and later that year an Aileen Osborn- Webb Award from the American Craft Council's College of Fellows; he was inducted into the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art in 2004; and in 2006, received the Distinguished Artist of the Year Award from Rotary International's Foundation for the Arts; he was honored with a Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2009; was a recipient of a United States Artists Windgate Fellowship in 2011; and in 2019, received the Curatorial Award for Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators, for his role as lead curator of the internationally touring exhibition, Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths. Joyce is a 2002, 2005 and 2013 alumni of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Art/Industry Residency program, and in 2008 was offered a lithography residency at UNM's Tamarind Institute.

Exhibiting internationally since 1981, Joyce's work has been shown at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; Graf-Zeppelin Haus, Friedrichshafen, Germany; Exposicion Centro, Guadalajara, Mexico; Lounais- Suomen Käsi-ja Taideteollisuusoppilaitos, Mynämäki, Finland; Museum of Applied Arts, Moscow, Russia; and Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France.

His work is in many permanent public collections, including the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Detroit Institute of Art; New Mexico Museum of Art; Luce Foundation Center for American Art; Mint Museum of Art; National Metal Museum; Boston Museum of Fine Art; Tucson Museum of Art; and Yale University Art Gallery.

Since the first invitation to lecture on his work in 1983, Joyce has taught and presented in over 100 museum institutions, universities, and college campuses throughout the United States. Among them: Boston University, College of Fine Arts; California College of the Arts; Columbia University; Corcoran School of the Arts and Design; Cranbrook Academy of Art; Dartmouth College; Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University; Ohio University; University of Iowa; University of Minnesota; and the University of Wisconsin. As an invited U.S. delegate, panelist and keynote speaker, Joyce has also lectured at conferences and symposia in Canada, Czech Republic, Belgium, England, Finland, Ireland, Italy, South Africa, Sweden and Wales.

Born, William Thomas Joyce, in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1956, he moved to El Rito, New Mexico in 1974 and established his studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1977.

Tom Joyce Biography [132 KB PDF]

Tom Joyce CV [434 KB PDF]

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