IT IN place

The first thing you notice on approaching Tom Otterness’ studio is the almost cicada like roar of the orange line subways (B,D,Q, etc.) screaming over the blue Manhattan bridge. You are surrounded by this periodic sound and the thrum and hum of rubber tires on the steel road of the bridge. Then you notice the graffitti on the humble red brick wall: Visualize Peace…world peace, etc) and only faintly can you see Tom’s name written with a sharpie over his bell. You however also see a huge truck being loaded with tons of bronze cutie pies (albeit cutie pies with guns and nooses). When you enter the studio itself you see a chaotic, fecund scatter of old molds and half finished castings, then you notice a bear in a helpless pose watching a huge man cry. This huge man crying was Otterness’ attempt at a memorial for the trade center, but you don’t know that, even as you feel it to be true.

You don’t meet the man himself, you meet first Moby Dick and Ahab and they lead you to a personal studio off to the side where you meet a self portrait.


There are scores of small projects being built in clay and wax dummies lay spread eagle, ready to be posed like expensive action figures. These tableau will be blown up my master sculptors, like this man and his apprentice who are working on Don Quixote piece. You feel the old worldness of the process.



He is a vision in white with white hair and some sort of white light/white heat pouring out of his eys… you think of kung fu movies and Gandalf the Wizard. He starts to talk with M.P., who is writing an essay for the catalog of his first major private showing in Paris (he has just decorated the Tuillaries, like he has now done up Broadway in NYC). He speaks pedagogically about how a sculpture is made and how much is his hand and how much the hands of his fifty plus staff. You soon realize that this a conversation by, of, and about hands… pushing hands… hands touching hands…hands touching stone and bronze. Tom Ottorness is a dedicated practitioner of the martial art, Thai Chi. He travels the world to compete at a serious level. His walls are decorated with ribbons and buddhist shrines. You then notice a well used punching bag hanging in the middle of the studio and gloves. He looks like a saint, but you realize he could take you out with one good blow… hands touching face.



It seems that he holds all the cards as he deomonstrates Thai-Chi and then warms a wax character with his flesh and breath until he can manipulate it as he speaks about power and politics and pain and terror. He has submitted the crying man as a memorial for the trade center and also for Liberty State Park in N.J. It would be like the Statue of Liberty in that you could climb it and use the head as a look out. The New York version would be eighty stories and occupy the foot prints of the original towers (and is later rejected on this basis…even after a compromise arrangement is offered, but you don’t know that yet and you are amazed at the scale and ambition of the piece… can cute be made so large? or does it become like the Staypufft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters…some how silly?)


He talks about the relations of power in the making of public art:

As he does this he makes two little towers with his thumb and index finger - one goes up and one goes down and he says, “In the beginnning the governemnt agency, jury, or corporate and or private donor has all the money and all the power. You are asking them for money and you are weak, but once you have the money and the process has begun and the mold is cast, then you have all the power and momentum and they are working for you. It is very much like pushing hands in Thai Chi. Now what we strive for in The Way is what the Chinese refer to as Wu-Chi. If you are familiar with the symbol of yin and yang, Wu-Chi is the moment when white and black cease to exist, but rather form an harmonius circle of gray.”

This is the Chinese idiograph,or pictograph of Wu-Chi. You notice the similarity to the Swiss cross and feel a frission shiver go up your spine. It arrives at your head and you are knocked out by the ineluctable modality… wasn’t that the thing your brother, Christian quoted your dad talking about in his Eulogy? And why does gray and grey keep coming up?

Now you are alone and it is three years later and there is the sound of doves… not pidgeons, mind you but actual doves and they sit on the old laundry line post out the rear window and woo and coo and kiss eachother. The pope is dead and you are thinking about the Chateau Neuf de Pape you drank with M.P. after the interview and of how this and all Cote du Rhone always tated of perfection to you even before you knew that the water of the Rhone had it’s origine in the Alps and carries with it Swiss Minerals and you wonder is it possible to taste the Mother land? Could one be genetically predisposed to a certain style of wine? And you think about Sideways and of how Sly keeps saying: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Grand Cru Classe Bourdeaux mostly Merlot?…so what’s Giamatti’e porblem…Merlot is good.”


The birds stop cooing and start screwing and it reminds you that you are alone.



Last night I had strange dreams about trying to sell art and I am struck by how what Otterness said about power and art is very relavant for any one (Christo, Barney, Murakami, and maybe even you, or me) trying to pull off a large art project. One must play a chess game of black against white and be prepared to defend and offend and maybe in the end go gray and uniffy the opposition into your camp: Mono No Aware… the beautiful sadness of time and cherry blossoms.

All drawings and photos ITIN, all sculptures Tom Otterness.

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