Artist Spotlight: Tristan Cloyd

I started painting and sculpting during my brief employment as a museum guard at The Menil Collection in Houston during the 90's. The museum has a large surrealist collection and the work of Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell, and Yves Tanguy resonated sharply with me.

I don't have an art degree, or any formal training, but I have taken some informal classes and did work briefly for a bronze foundry learning some techniques for applying patinas to bronze. But most of the work has come from lots of trial and error, conceptual ideas from undergraduate classes, and trips to junk and hardware stores. I started mostly painting, but now focus primarily on assemblages and sculptures.

I'm fascinated with organic shapes and developing a form that can be used to represent any biological body; anthropomorphic and zoomorphic hybrids.

When you see a lantern it conjures pastoral images on the frontier, bordering nature, a beacon for the dark, the unknown, technological reminiscence. The lanterns are an ideal frame in which to encase the small bronze and clay forms I make but more importantly evoke meaning and associations to light. I like to assemble contrasting artifacts, aged rusted lanterns, chrome sculpted forms, and elements from nature.

I love chrome. It reflects everything. It exudes inexorably, fluid expansion of form, twists and contorts in action, scintillates through elemental magnetic attraction, and resists by the erosion of arteries in space. Plus, it's so shiny.

The work of Tristan Cloyd is on display at the She-Sha Cafe and Hookah Lounge in downtown Blacksburg through February 15 alongside the works of Suzy Nees, Peter Sforza, Pris Sears, Nic Umstead, Adam Wilson, Dave Franusich, Christina O'Connor, and Lee Hawthorne for the 16 Blocks Art Show.