Tom Friedman

(American, born 1965)

Tom Friedman is a contemporary American sculptor whose work explores the relationship between perception and logic. He uses vernacular materials including hair, plastic, Styrofoam, and paper to create unexpected objects that are often autobiographical in nature. For his Untitled (sculpture) (1990), Friedman used his own pubic hair to create a virtually perfect spiral by maneuvering the strands around a white, rectangular bar of ordinary soap. “Art, for me, is a context to slow the viewer's experience from their everyday life in order to think about things they haven't thought about. Or to think in a new way,” Friedman’s said. Born in 1965 in St. Louis, MO, he received his BFA in graphic illustration from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA in sculpture from the University of Illinois at Chicago. The artist has had solo exhibitions and retrospectives at many esteemed institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute in Chicago, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. He lives and works in Northampton, MA.