Tell me about yourself, where you live and your background/lifestyle.
My name is Tom Schirtz. I am an artist who lives in Los Angeles. I graduated from the University of South Florida in 1990 with a degree in studio art. My areas of concentration were printmaking and ceramics. After graduating, I managed and was the senior "vocational" instructor for the sculpture studios at the University of South Florida's College of Fine Arts, which basically means that I taught beginning students different art processes related to sculpture and installation art and was in charge of the physical aspects of the welding, wood, and ceramics shops.
I was also very involved in the graduate program at the College and the art community in Tampa where the University is located. I was a co-founder of an artist's studio called titanic anatomy (no caps). This was a group of artists who rented an old cigar factory in Ybor City, just outside of Tampa. Even though most of us worked at the College, we lamented the lack of dialogue and exchange of critical ideas that we had "enjoyed" while in school, therefore, when we set up our studios, we arranged them so that there were no walls that enclosed any one artist's space to encourage interaction between the studio members and guests.
titanic anatomy also believed in encouraging interaction between the various art communities within the Tampa area and kept one half of the studio space open for different events, such as plays, film screenings and exhibitions and even combinations of all of them, such as "Flea Soap: Artists Against Hate"; an night of performances, speeches and exhibitions by artists, musicians, politicians and people of Tampa dedicated to defeating pending anti-gay legislation.
I also was a member of the Exhibition Committee for The Florida Center for Contemporary Art in Ybor City. The Florida was a non-profit organization dedicated to exhibiting contemporary, cutting-edge work by Florida artists.
In 1993, I left Florida for Los Angeles where my wife, Sylvia Ruiz (MFA in Film, Florida State University) was working for a documentary production company. I began freelancing as an art installer for the Frederick R. Weisman Museum at Pepperdine University and for The Daniel Weinberg Gallery in Santa Monica. I then took the position of Chief Curator at Gemini G.E.L., where I worked on projects for John Baldessari, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Serra, Robert Rauschenberg, Elizabeth Murray, Ellsworth Kelly, James Rosenquist, David Hockney, Robert Gober, Bruce Nauman and Allen Ginsberg. After almost four years there (of what I consider "intense post-graduate work in Art History"), I left to go back to freelancing so that I could concentrate more on my own work.
Since then, I have continued to work on projects with Gemini and other places like Muse [X] Editions where I have been able to work with artists such as Uta Barth, Cindy Bernard, Eileen Cowin, Skip Arnold and Andrea Zittel. I also remain active in the community. I was recently a grants panelist for the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department and I assist some alternative galleries with their operations.