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

Mechana

These are some of the smaller works I've made over the past year. I call them Mechana, they portray machines that have cast off their primary function and are living out their lives. These are collages of frozen moments in the Mechana's world. Each piece is a single activity being carried out by post-utilitarian quasi-sentient tools. Each piece is searching for a new purpose. They are constructed from wood from historic buildings, bike parts, piano wire, and road signs. 

Strange Beauty

Jim asked me to display pianoNovo at the Strange Beauty film fest. He lit it beautifully and it projected an amazing shadow. I'm on the hunt for some decent photos. As always, moving art is as challenging as making art. Jim and Chris help me roll the piece from Shadowbox to Man-Bites-Dog.

Chef Challenge Trophy

This is the third year of making trophies for the Durham Farmer's Market Chef Challenge. Billy Cotter of Toast won for a third time so there is kind of a collection of these guys at Toast. The highlight for me is getting to talk to Frank Stacio who is awesome! Also food...

Fire Zeppelins

 Lou and Bronwen asked me to make a Zeppelin for their wedding. I made two. I made them to be ignited. I found two of the most aggro people at the wedding to have a aerial duel with them. Myself and another ropedarter shot at the Zeppelins.

These Zeppelins were all constructed from political sign metal. I covered them at in paper mache' at the wedding camp. This was a fun family project that involved many hands.

Every photo that looks good comes from Devon Rowland (who is brilliant!)

Mike and Stacy are locked in combat with the flaming zeppelins.

To make matters more interesting Dustin and I took sides and shot at the opposing Zeppelins with ropedarts.