Tom Van Sant

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Location:


  • Santa Monica, California, United States of America

Bio:

  • SIGGRAPH 1993

    Tom Van Sant is the founder and director of the Geosphere Project, a non-profit organization whose mission is to make complex global systems understandable. With various project underway, the Geosphere Project is using graphics and imaging technology to create visualizations that illustrate and enhance our understanding of earth processes. Through the use of appropriate and enlightening visualizations, Tom and the Geosphere Project are seeking to influence policy makers and ordinary citizens so that we can progress from being earth resource users to earth resource managers. Tom has participated in earth resource conferences around the globe, including the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and in the 1992 World’s Fair in Seville, Spain. The Geosphere Project has technology agreements in place with many providers and consumers of earth resource data. and is currently working to install “Earth Situation Rooms” which incorporate Geosphere’s visualization technology into several dozen sites around the world, including the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

    Tom is also a sculptor, painter, muralist, environmental planner and architectural designer. In thirty years of professional work he has executed over sixty major sculpture and mural commissions for public spaces around the  world. These include the Central Lobby of the Honolulu International Airport, the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance headquarters in Newport Beach, the City of Inglewood Civic Center, the Century Park Sheraton Hotel in Manila, and the Taipei International Airport in the Republic of China. He created the rows of hanging banners at  the Thomas Bradley Terminal of the Los Angeles International Airport, and designed and built the gently curving pedestrian bridge linking the Los Angeles City Hall with the North Mall across Temple Street. In 1987, Van Sant completed the giant stained glass window for the Glenkirk Presbyterian Church in Glendora, California. Tom has had fifteen one-man exhibits in the United States, Europe and Australia. His work is represented in both public and private collections around the world, including the collections of King Hussein of Jordan, Millard Sheets of California, and S. Edward Tomaso. He is also known for his innovative design of large-scale kites, which have been flown and exhibited in museums of art and museums of science and industry in the United States and Europe.  

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