Published:

08/10/2011 01:57am

David Tobey -- Teacher, Musician, Painter, Sculptor and Conservationist

David Tobey, a music and art teacher in two middle schools in his home community of New Rochelle in Westchester county, New York is also a professional violinist (a regularly performing member of The Westchester Philharmonic orchestra) and both a professional painter and sculptor. A recent feature article about him in Gannett's Journal News, a major Westchester community and adjacent regional daily newspaper, in a Sunday piece on him called him a "Renaissance man".

Indeed, Tobey got his start at a very young age, particularly in his early schooling in the visual arts. His late father was the well-known historical muralist and book & magazine illustrator Alton Tobey (1914-2005). His exposure to music was also as a child, since his mother was a concert pianist and a piano teacher.

Although his music keeps him very busy, as does his position as Middle Schools Orchestra Director in the schools where teaches, private gigs at celebrity weddings and other affairs, and his work at the Westchester Philharmonic, he somehow manages to never neglect his visual art as well as his music.

Over the past ten years Tobey has had over two dozen solo and group shows of his art at galleries in New York City and in Westchester, many of which have been benefits for not-for-profit organizations he supports, including the Westchester Philharmonic orchestra, the Juilliard School (he’s a graduate from there) and other organizations he supports.

His art and career have also been commented upon extensively in publications including the New York Times, Art in America, the Art Times Journal and many other local newspapers and other media and he has appeared on radio and on TV talking about his work. A feature article about his art in the January 2007 issue of Gallery & Studio magazine describes his sculptures as having ” . . .a unique draftsmanly fluidity in metal, surpassing even that of [Julio] Gonzalez”.

Tobey creates welded steel sculpture at Les Métalliers Champenois in Paterson, New Jersey — an international award-winning foundry that specializes in fine and architectural art in metal for industry. LMC’s projects have included the Torch & Flame of the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Torch in Paris, the main entrance doors of the New York Public Library and dozens of other important commissions both here in the U.S. and abroad. Here Tobey has access to a huge array of materials and tools to fabricate his metal artwork.

With his sculpture, Tobey can be considered something of a conservationist as well. At times he may find scrap pieces that have been discarded from one of the foundry’s architectural projects, most of which would wind up in a 'scrap heap' to be melted down. He often uses one or more of them as elements to create a sculpture with no other additions. In other sculptures he literally welds these pieces he finds into a finished work of art or he forms his own elements from raw materials to create other special forms and shapes that link the discarded orphan elements together.

At other times, he reclaims a discarded element as a single dominant object and builds an entire sculptural universe around it from scratch, embellishing the final art with other metal forms that he crafts himself, completing a dynamic evolution to the form of the final work of art.

Following the close of one of a recent a two-and-a-half-month solo exhibition of his work at the White Plains Museum this past June, three venues in Westchester County, NY are now newly exhibiting his sculpture. They include the Washington Square Art Gallery, 367 South Ridge Street in Rye Brook; James, 21 Babbit Road in Bedford Hills, and the museum store at The Katohan Museum of Art, Route 22 & Jay Street in Katonah. In New York City, Tobey's art is also represented by Pleiades Gallery and Investinart.

The Washington Square Gallery, that specializes in art by internationally famous artists such as Charles Fazzino and Thomas Arvid is featuring large pieces from over a foot to four feet in height. James and The Katonah Museum st