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Tom Otterness sculptor or public artist. As you like.

How did you get into public art?

I first started doing public art through this group, Collaborative Projects. A bunch of us, about 50 artists got together in the late 70’s and tried to bring artwork outside the galleries and onto the street. Jenny Holzer was among them and Kiki Smith, Johnny Hern, a lot of us ended up, later ended up, continuing that idea and working in public. That was the start.

Why did you want to get it out there?

The galleries are for a certain audience you know, an audience that’s got more money in general and has BA’s. It’s a different audience that you’re pitching to. So I think for all of us we wanted to get out and get to an everyday audience. Get out in public.

Is that because you relate to the everyday man yourself?

I don’t know if I’m relating or not. I think a lot of it is a class difference. Just to be able to pitch to direct work and consider your boss to be of every class instead of from the highest class. Normally artwork is, the audience for artwork is normally an upper class audience. So, I think it was all of our desire to get out in public and reach everybody. And reach people that weren’t necessarily going out of their way to look at art, that you could reach them on the street directly.

Your art also seems to be about different classes. Can you explain that?

The artwork itself has kind of five character types. Blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, cops, all male and female. Usually the guys have no pants on and the women have no tops. That seems like kind of a balanced deal. Radicals have pointed hats and no clothes and my favorite are rich people with top hats and diamond necklaces or pearl necklaces. I take those five classes and kind of make scenarios out of them, make vignettes of meaning out of those five classes.

What about the money bag head statues?

When I started the subway project I really went to do research on how the subway was built. Went back to the 1880’s saw photos kind of got into New York history then and I ran, of course, into Thomas Nast and these political cartoons that he did in the 1880’s. You know, not much had changed. The corruption seemed about the same. The imagery seemed perfectly suitable. So I adapted a lot of things straight from him and one of them was the moneybag head figure, just sort of an all-purpose image of corruption and money mindedness.

How did you get the commission?

It’s part of MTA’s arts for transit and they have a competition. They must have had several hundred artists apply and they got down to maybe 5 or 6 finalists. And we presented ideas and I won that competition. I think we set a record. I think it went 10 years from start to finish. From the point that they selected me until its final installation was 10 years. I was done in about 5 years and the subway itself took about another 5 to get the renovations done.

Did you install all of the figures yourself?

Yeah, and that was one of the advantages of having the installation take such along time. Normally, in a normal installation, we’d go in with the work all planned out and install it within a week. But in this situation I would put out 4 or 5 pieces and I’d watch for a couple months to see how people reacted to them. There were lots of safety issues and traffic issues. But it turned out to be a real advantage to be able to have so much time. The installation itself took about two years and I would watch and see how people reacted and them I’d think of new ideas or new places to put them and then I’d add more. I’d watch some more, then I’d add some more, then I’d watch some more and add some more. A lot of it too was simply spending a lot of time there and seeing where people congregated. I still don’t understand why but everybody’s on the uptown A side and not the downtown side so much. So, I put more work on the uptown side and they cluster in certain places so I put work where people already cluster and gather. So, it was a very slow process but I think it was advantageous.

Did you have all of the figures already made?

No, I made figures as I thought of them. There was enough time that I could actually make new figures or pull new figures in. I think I put out about 5 times what they paid me to do out there. Finally my wife stopped me and said that’s it we’ve got to leave something for our daughter’s inheritance. But I got so excited by the situation. It was so ideal for me in the subways that I kept putting more and more work in.

How many are there?

My daughter’s school sort of made a game out of trying to find every one. I hate to give it away but I think there are 108 sculptures all over the place.

What is the process for making the sculptures from the beginning to the end?

The process for the sculptures always starts with drawing. My first proposals were drawings. I did studies of people in the subways. I did drawings of telephones or lights that I then converted into surrealistic sculptures. I did research drawings with Thomas Nast and other kinds of historical drawings of the making of the subway. I had drawings from that. Then from the drawings I’d start making clay models. These were small enough that I just went straight to full scale to make clay models of the figures. We actually built, in my old studio; we built a complete subway staircase and ibeams. I had full-scale samples of a staircase and ibeams so I could fit the clay sculptures exactly to the ibeams and things in my studio and then cast them and get them out on the subway. It’s especially important for me to see that figures might look at each other across space or look at you in the eye when you’re walking by so all that’s really important. And it’s very traditional the system itself the method is clay, much like Egyptian or Greek or Chinese bronze casting. Lost wax process, clay to plaster to wax. Burn out the wax and pour in the bronze, very traditional kind of process.

Do you always use the same person to do the bronze casting?

I shop all over the place. It’s a business, so I bid everybody against each other. Places on the east coast and I’ve gone to Italy. I’ve gone to the west coast to Walla Walla Washington. I cast everywhere.

How long would it take to create a figure?

It’s hard to describe how, the process itself, from beginning to end to take a figure from clay to bronze. If I’m working quickly it’s a year and a half. A normal project might take four years from beginning to end with a lot of multiple bronzes.

Did you have structural problems in the subway?

I always have structural engineers review everything and there are tricks that I’ve learned to make, like that ibeam, to make the little figure look like it’s lifting this ibeam but you have some trick in fact where it’s supported somewhere else. I love that kind of Mighty Mouse feeling that you can give these little figures, this heroic strength and I think kids get into that too. I’ve got pictures of little girls going over and lifting the ibeams themselves.

Are cartoons an influence for you?

I was influenced a lot by animation, Disney, Popeye, 30’s. When I was growing up in the 50’s they showed a lot of comics, animation from the 30’s on TV so that style influenced me. Tomato cans dancing, that whole 30’s style was a big influence.

Did you always want to be an artist?

I always knew I wanted to be an artist. I trained as a painter and I didn’t make sculpture really until I was in my late 20’s. I started by making little tiny figures and I sold them for $4.99 out on the sidewalks and every time I made another dollar they’d get a little bigger.

Do you find that parents are unhappy with the topless/bottomless figures?

When I did my first project in Battery Park and I put the little figures out and the guys didn’t have pants on, I imagined that I’d be out there grinding off 150 little penises. I thought there’d be big trouble. But nobody has actually been damaged too badly by that that I know of. Lots of kids have grown up with it and we can all live with this level of honestly out there in the public art. It’s one of the things that I really admire MTA for is they let that stuff go through. You know, ahh, it’s okay, you know it is an adult. You see worse things in the subway than bronze penises.

Is there a reason that you show that?

In general I think that the public art should talk about the things we don’t normally talk about between strangers. It’s a way to instigate conversation. Initiate conversation between strangers. I think sex, money, class, race, those are all the things we don’t talk about in polite society and the sculpture can give people an excuse to talk about those things. And have a kind of public debate or at least a discussion.

You seem to be into education. Is that something that’s important to you?

People are always curious about the process itself. How you make it, tell us how you do things. That’s okay; I think any avenue into the work is good. The real meaning is something else besides how it’s made but I’m happy anyway that people approach the work. I’m happy that they’re there and looking at it.

How did you get the idea for this station?

Art is always ambiguous. I had ideas about how to make the 14^th street station. Whether my ideas are what people really understand. I doubt it. Everybody understands in their own way. I guess I was most excited by just having this mass of people. I think they said 30,000 people an hour during rush hour coming through and you don’t generally find the richest part of New York down in the subway. You find everybody else down in the subway. So for me that made it a particular slice of our population that I can pitch to down there and kind of make fun of rich people and it’s all okay. I liked the idea of Life Underground. There’s the life above ground and then there’s the life underground and it was sort of a kind of ideal place for my work.

Did they add any props for your figures?

No, well, yeah, sometimes I’d modify a fence or we’d work together. The MTA would help me on safety issues and how to mount and we worked together on those things.

There seem to be spaces where there were artworks. Have you noticed that?

No, it’s been pretty secure. There was one work that was taken early on but it was right in front of a manned, 24 hour manned toll booth and me thinks it was one of the construction workers. Got in there and got it with a power tool. They’re very well installed. I’ve seen it as the ultimate challenge. They’re survived down there pretty good.

People seem to make the art their own. How does that make you feel?

It’s the biggest reward to go down. If I’m feeling depressed I’ll take a subway over to 14^th street, get out and something is always happening. Someone is always there touching it, standing on it, looking at it. I saw one guy shaking the snake down on the L Train trying to get the snake loose. And then the train pulled in and he was not happy that he couldn’t get it and he kicked it really hard and went jumping into the subway holding his foot. There’s always something going on. So, that’s one of my biggest rewards just to go there and watch kind of anonymously and see people engaged in it. And I think what’s my problem and I get back on the subway and I feel fine.

Tell me about the little man on the bench.

That was a good one the guy with the money bag on the bench. In order to avoid the controversy of having a sculpture take a space that a person would normally use one of the MTA guys suggested we add a new bench. So that bench was brought in above and beyond the regular benches. So that we had 5 new seats not one missing.

Is there any figure that’s your favorite?

I think the favorite one there for the situation is the alligator coming out of the sewer eating the guy with the moneybag head. That seems to be the most New York myth and sculpture there.

And the other figures don’t seem to care.

Eh, no problem, it’s your problem.

What about the Macy’s balloon?

Someone came from Macy’s and approached me. I had work out on Broadway and in the subway and they came and asked me if I wanted to do a balloon and I though wow, great. It’s how I first knew New York was watching the Macy’s Day Parade in Kansas. I was the first artist they’d asked to be in the Macy’s parade and I thought, okay the Humpty Dumpty. A huge Humpty Dumpty looking as if he’s just jumped off of one of the buildings and he’s on the way down. That was great. I think it’s one of the avenues if you think about public are where I think that reached 75 million people or something in their homes. So it’s like public art that comes into your home on the TV and is part of this Americana parade. It was really a great thing for me.

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