Tower During Covid, 2023

Cindy Tower

Multi-Disciplinary ; Visual Arts : Painter , Sculptor

I could not tell you where I am from. I am an air force brat born on the Hollowman base in New Mexico. I have lived all around the United States, and feel displaced more from moving around as a visiting adjunct professor, than from moving with the air force. My father did learn to fly in Hondo, but I have recently settled in San Antonio–falling in love with Texas as resident artist of Big Bend in 1998, and living here since 2014. Throughout my career I have included a component of community engagement in my practice. This could be attributed to seeking a “belongingness”.

The first community project created in Texas was Tank, ’00, as resident artist at the Southwest School. (See Image) I had spent a summer gutting appliances from a Texas landfill, and then held a series of workshops making transparent marine creatures out of collaged gel materials. Participant’s artwork was then inserted into “openings” in the fronts of appliances that were painted blue. The intent was to make a giant repurposed aquarium–illuminating the publics’ artistic contributions. Originally, I wanted artworks glued to an interior revolving drum inside the appliance pile–giving an illusion of marine creatures swimming. This part was not executed, due to lack of funding, steam and from injuring my knees. Scrappers came and took the show down and the Southwest School became the University of Texas. I am now bow-legged–not from riding horses–but because I still need new knees.

Artist Medium: Oil ; Wood

Artist Statement of Work

Tell us about your work (style, approach, philosophy, subject and/or theme):

I work with any material that I find. But I do not make art until I have a reason to do so. Throughout my career I have used recycled and repurposed materials.

This decade I have become more interested in collaborations and in political art than I am in personal object-making. This could simply be a function of my age--wanting to play with others more. In my Texas neighborhood, I have organized a series of happenings--"Man of Dust","Mother's Day Evening", "Dance/Paint", "Fall Soiree", "Firefly"(see PDF) and "Poetry, Painting, Pop-Up" (see Poetry Pop-Up PDF) with local artist, Rachel Duke, to name a few.

In 2016, I conducted free public art workshops with recycled art materials held in local parks. Art-making was filmed on blue screen and I animated participants "flying" over our district flapping their collages--"District Two Take Off" may be found on Youtube.

I am privileged to have studied with Alan Kaprow, father of happenings, in the late 80's. Like him, I prefer not to use computers or social media. In this way, I aim to promote more direct communication, word-of-mouth exchanges, direct eye contact, working inter-generationally and help nurture innate creative abilities of us all. My most successful events have been those in which the viewers have become actual participants, as in "Firefly" where viewers had to become "fireflys" and flash their light to "see" the artworks made by community members.

These criteria might occupy me for the rest of my life.