Email
PrintMetal of Honor
Tom Odell, a master of non-representational metal sculpture, reflects on how people appreciate his art.
Balance of Measure by Tom Odell
Tom Odell’s work in metal ranges in size, from elegant and fragile handheld jewelry to hulking, powerful eight-foot-tall sculptures. No matter the size, such work— whether it be hanging from one’s ears or anchored in the front yard — says something about an individual. “It communicates pretty clearly ‘This is who I’d like you to think I am,’” he says.
He works with original non-representational designs, which means he does not create realist figures or forms. You won’t find metal starfish pendants or a bust of a famous person. But within his non-representational realm, his creativity runs off in many directions. Odell, who shares a gallery with his wife Carol, a painter, in Chatham, has experimented with many styles, materials, sizes and shapes, and it is evident his work has even evolved through the years. He often works in series, but goes back and forth between those series at will.
He never imagined himself an artist. “A long time ago, I was intent on being a wood-worker and building furniture,” says Odell. Then he met Bernard Kelly, a jeweler, and his career took off. In 1970, Odell taught himself welding and traveled to Kyoto, Japan to study Eastern metalwork and jewelry. “I was very interested in how the different alloys work,” he explains. He started very small with jewelry and then gradually moved up in size, doing table-top sculptures and wall-hung pieces, which he affectionately calls “wall brooches.” He also expanded his non-representational work to include casting, which gives him much more freedom to choose forms and not have to worry about the repetitive hammering physically taking its toll on his elbow and shoulder.
His work has continued to take on larger proportions and he started collaborating with a fabricator in Seekonk. “I guess the furniture-scale was always calling,” he says. He is currently working on a commissioned piece for a Chatham resident. He picks up one of many cardboard models of the piece and shows how it will look. Lately, he and the buyer have been discussing colors.
Unlike many artists, he cannot trace the roots of his inspiration to, say, the landscape of the Cape or the intricacies of its light. Instead, Odell studies the malleability of metal (“I make 8 or 9 different alloys,” he says) and how it can be shaped (much from trial and error). “I pay attention to shadows, to textures, to what’s concave and what’s convex,” he says, pointing out how a sculpture whose form is not entirely evident from certain distances or angles. Oftentimes, he looks through old sketchbooks to see if something might spark an idea; in fact, some of his more recent larger sculptures are based on jewelry designs originally.
The work speaks volumes, and Odell is happy to keep exploring new ways to communicate through his art. “Everytime I take on something new, I learn something myself,” he says.
