TOM JOYCE

At age fourteen he began working summers in a letterpress printing shop in El Rito, New Mexico. The printer also had a blacksmith shop set up in back to repair broken press parts and to forge other practical things for the village farmers. By 16, Joyce felt that forging iron, rather than printing, would be his life's work, so he left high school to begin applying himself full-time to learning more about blacksmithing.

Printing and forging-books and fire have always been in close proximity for Joyce. His work with books-titled after printer's terms-always involves systems of pressure and burning. Burning references vulnerability to loss and the fragility of many information storage systems. In Bridge, charred volumes are suspended in place only by the weight of massive wood beams. Text is itself a compression, forcing everyday infinities into words on a page, blips of text on a screen, or zeros and ones on a disc. Quoin is a wedging system used to "lock up" the words once they're arranged on the press platen. Joyce is interested in the idea that right and wrong are not inherent in any technology, but rather hinge on how practices and beliefs are applied. Here he explores issues of re-pression and re-printing as they pertain to ideas of informational loss and preservation.

Through his bookworm love of learning, he has acquired a formidable knowledge of the world history of metalwork. From his easy disposition, his spellbinding forge and his imaginative intellect flows a seemingly endless array of transcendent forms. His consummately conceived Memorial Sculptures, made in response to the tragedy of September 11, 2001, are exemplary. These elegant objects are cast from an iron alloy Joyce composed himself, using ash from the World Trade Center site, healing earth from the Santuario de Chimayó, and sand from a Tibetan mandala made as a prayer for peace. Each, heavy to hold, memorial encases a beautiful concept of interiority. By removing each piece from the mold while the metal is still red hot, the sculpture chills on the surface and as a result, shrinks on the inside to open up a geode-like space in the center. Over time, water migrating through the alloy will condense within, filling each piece with tears of life sustaining liquid.

Joyce's commitment to the global and local community takes many directions. He conceived a lectern at the yet-to-be-realized United Nations World Center in San Francisco from pieces of dismantled nuclear weapons, gifted to the project from the United States and Russia. He constructed the gates for the Museum of Albuquerque's Sculpture Garden from steel and metal objects found along the banks of the Rio Grande. By implementing a mentoring program for "at-risk teens" for the duration of the project, Joyce has inspired more than a few young people to pursue the art of blacksmithing.

Interns aren't his only admirers; his recent MacArthur Foundation Fellowship is evidence of that, as well as his placement in collections worldwide. Dividing his time between private and public commissions, Tom Joyce is shaping history. The Archivists of American Art at the Smithsonian have recently asked him to be interviewed for inclusion in their Oral History Program. All artists are the sons and daughters of Hephaestus, the ancient Greek blacksmith to the gods; sometimes the apple just falls closer to the tree.