Born deep within the suburban hive known as Littleton, I grew up nestled in a town created around small plantations of cookie cutter homes. Once I actually attended a Super bowl party in a house across town that was the exact model of my home.  At that moment I decided to make unique objects.  I create art because one thought can be made infinitely.  That is to say if I had one hundred people and told them to draw trees each one would look different, I could have the same idea as someone else yet my artistic representation would be different than any other. 

Art has always been a part of my life since I was about five or six.  I remember my grandma giving me the “Big Red Chief” newsprint pad and I can recall the feeling of frustration when I erased a hole through the page.  I went to her complaining that it had happened and begging for better paper.  Her response was to keep using it for all the little ideas I could think of and that she would get the good paper out when I had come up with a good idea,  I finished the pad later that evening.  Along with the newsprint pad I also remember a pair of tapes I owned, one was a story about a circus and the other was an ocean cruise adventure.  At certain times during the tapes I would be prompted to draw what I had seen in my mind’s eye.  Each time I listened to the tapes I would draw something different, I often wish I had kept the tapes and the drawings. The best thing about the tapes was that when I listened to them it was my world so it was my colors too, I mean wouldn’t you want to see what a blue lion looks like?

Unfortunately, I no longer have the tapes but I still believe in the “my world, my colors” mentality.  Through the years many artists have influenced me.  Barbara Kruger has taught me the power of text.  My first painting was in high school, a study of Roy Liechtenstein; I recreated a page out of the Punisher War Journal (a comic book I loved). Today there are many different artists and styles that continue to influence my artwork; from Jackson Pollock and his surrealist work, both Dale Chihuly’s two-dimensional and his three-dimensional works, and even the exciting artists on YouTube like muralist and painter TenHundred (Peter Robinson) and Ali Spagnola with her fresh and always exciting projects to shape her world.  

But the Artists alone didn’t influence me, I had a slight addiction to the long forgotten Saturday mornings.  Oh how I wish I could go back to the Saturday mornings and relive that time of innocence.  Yes, even the likes of GI Joe, Scooby-doo, and even Pee-wee Herman have helped shape my artistic view.  I recall a claymation short on Pee-wee’s show that was focused on a pair of pennies that became eyes for a little girl named, of all things, Penny.  Every Saturday I would watch the show in anticipation of watching that short. The first time I saw it I wanted to work with clay and other materials.  

Also at the same time in my life my parents were flying a hot air balloon.  I had helped numerous times setting it up.  There was a moment every time while “blowing it up” that my dad would go inside the balloon, I was able to go in with him and it became a common sight for me but I do remember the first time I he took me in.  Inside it was colder than outside and you had to yell to talk because of the giant fan but it was beautiful.  The light would come through the material and change the color of your skin and the dome of material overhead seemed alive as it grew.  But my favorite part of adventuring into the “envelope” was when someone else was in there for their first time, I work to have people make the same face of awe looking at my art as I saw when my dad took people into the balloon.

I use almost all media. I paint, make jewelry, erect sculptures, shoot photographs, draw, and constantly try new materials and processes.  One of my sculptures that made people come close to looking like they just walked into the balloon was a large cat made of the yarn it was playing with.  As for all those Saturday morning cartoons I watched, well I’m told it comes through in my drawings, I’m told I have a cartoony style about me, it is even said that I have a twisted bit of humor in my sculptures.  

Sure, some say everything in art may have been done already, but I don’t believe it’s been done in every way.  I strive to use ideas and methods and make them unique to my voice.  That is what great art does, it stands apart from the rest. Whats next? I am not sure- I know I’m curious to new things and places, maybe move out to Nevada and use an old airplane hangar for a studio.  Who knows maybe we’ll go into space travel, if we do I want to be the first artist to go and re-create what was seen.  

-Sean Thompson