Tom E. Hall

Tom E. Hall (Seattle) grew up near Binghamton, NY. His interest in structures originated with the bridges and industrial architecture surrounding that region. Once a major source for manufacturing along the railway that fed New York City and Chicago, Binghamton has suffered a lingering economic decline. Attempts toward urban renewal and revitalization saw much of the cities industrial identity erased. The partially demolished structures that remained along with the vacant shells of abandoned factories became subjects for his investigation and inquiry. His work is an ongoing exploration into the spaces and identity of structures within the built environment.

In 1997 he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He moved to Seattle in 1998. He was awarded Artist Trust GAPs in 2004 and 2001, and his work is in the collections of the City of Seattle and King County.

Tom received a 2004 GAP to help defray the cost of materials, travel, and lodging for a two weeks stay in Portland, OR while completing and expanding on an existing series of large-scale bridge drawings. Created on-site along the Willamette and Columbia rivers, the artist will complement this series by deriving source material for an adjacent series to be based on the shadows cast by these same industrial bridges. Working from photographs and fabricated models, the cast shadows themselves will be painted on the planes of neutral interiors. Once the images are competed the models will be removed, leaving only the afterimage. “Removing the subject, the viewer then has the opportunity to reconstruct it.”