By day, Tom Dawson, RLA, is a urban designer and landscape architect working to enhance Durham though planning and designing open spaces. Tom believes a sense of place is established amid the individual details of an urban landscape, so by night he fabricates sculpture and street furniture out of the Shadowbox, an downtown art space.

He has designed and fabricated trophies for the Durham Farmer's Market Chef Challenge for the past four years, designed and led a team of volunteers in building the grass-roof Beaver Marsh Kiosk, and has taken prizes at the Scrapel Hill Sculpture Competition in Chapel Hill. His ongoing project is to design and fabricate sculptural bike racks that reflect the character of small businesses in downtown Durham.

This bench was designed and installed for the Headstart Center in Hillsborough in 2009 as part of a playground project. We installed plenty of fun aromatic and edible plants. The bench was made from heart of oak logs and a pine seat. We called it MapelWing or MaplePod

Old Flowers

Sculptural forms based on plants.

Peschescope: A fish-eyed lens eye patch.

Used as a prop in the film "When Walt Whitman Was a Little Girl" by Jim Havercamp http://www.jimhaverkamp.com/

Rocking Ship: Instability structure

This ship needed to happen. After the Shadobox Kids and I turned a horse trough into the painted rolling SS Callico and wheeled it around the neighborhood. I wanted to do an instability structure that worked with ships and rocking. The sail is meant to catch the wind and rock the structure.

Or incomprehensibly slow traffic... 

Testing!Testing!

Wave Forms Scrapel Hill 2013

Two waves pulling apart from eachother

Connected by a kokedama, a ball of plants and earth suspended in between their struggle

Participate by turning the crank, turning the little world.

SignWave installation at the Shadowbox