Thomas Morrissey, Texas Sculpture Group

From Texarkana, Arkansas

Artist Statement:

There is much to be said today about Gain of Function research. An activity that I, as a visual artist have been involved with in the development of my work for several decades. Science mimics art at many levels but somehow the “sciences” often seem to take a front seat to those experimental creative ventures.  A fact well documented throughout history. 

This piece, Flying Debris, is one recent offspring of this research: resultant of my own Gain of Function research this past year. The found and random elements in this piece, combined through experimentation, modulation, incubation, culturing and other “scientific” processes in the “Petri-dish” of my studio have, through gain of function, emerged… having achieved an enhanced, synergistic function as a work of art.

Artist Biography:

Thomas Morrissey currently resides in Texarkana where he is an adjunct professor of communication and visual art at Texas A&M.  He is professor emeritus, having retired from the Community College of Rhode Island as full professor in 2017. Exhibited internationally, his work has been included in American Crafts, Sculpture Magazine, Art New England and as feature articles in Ceramics Monthly, ArtScope, Studio Potter and several other publications.  A multi-media artist, his book: Between the Lines, a 17-year study in B&W photographs from the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial was published by Syracuse University Press in 2000.  

He was an invited American Artist to the Third Annual International Sculpture Symposium in Hue Vietnam where he erected a large-scale marble sculpture, permanently displayed in the Ba Thang Hai Sculpture Park along the Perfume River. Morrissey served as a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War. He holds an MFA from Arizona State University.