A native of Wichita, Kansas, Sculptor Tom Otterness is well known for his large-scale public installations found in parks and public plazas throughout the United States. Attending The Art Students League of New York in the early 70s, he subsequently attended the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mr. Otterness initiated his career as a sculptor in the late 1970s as a member of the artists’ group Collaborative Projects, Inc. (a.k.a Colab). In 1980, he helped organize The Times Square Show, an exhibition that included the multimedia works of then-unheralded artists such as Keith Haring, Kiki Smith and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Following the show, Tom Otterness’ affiliation with the Brooke Alexander Gallery in New York commenced in the early 1980s. He participated in the 1985 show “Working in Brooklyn,” presented by the Brooklyn Museum. He also had his work featured in numerous other international venues, including the 1985 Whitney Biennial Exhibition, and the Nouvelle Biennale de Paris.

With a longtime connection to the City of New York, Tom Otterness maintains his studio in Brooklyn to this day. He has created many of his public installations specifically for city locations including Times Square, The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, Jr., Park (part of Battery Park), Roosevelt Island, The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, and the 14th Street-Eighth Avenue subway station. One of the initial public artworks by Tom Otterness was The New World, which was commissioned by the U.S. General Services Administration in 1987. Installed in an outdoor plaza in front of the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles, it depicts stylized figures engaged in manual labor. The success of Mr. Otterness’ commission led to other General Services Administration projects for courthouses in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; and Portland, Oregon. Another seminal public work, The Real World, was commissioned in 1986 and installed in New York’s Battery Park in 1992. In this set of sculptures, Tom Otterness humorously portrays a bulldog tethered to a water fountain, whose interest is piqued by a cat crouched on a low wall. The cat itself is tracking a bird, which is preoccupied by another element of the sculptural installation. Other whimsical elements Mr. Otterness integrated into this interactive work include figures toppling chess pieces on a bench top, and a figure clinging halfway up an old-fashioned lamppost. The work is children-friendly and prefigures Tom Otterness’ creation of sculptural playgrounds in Colorado, Massachusetts, and New York City’s Silver Towers.