Tom Stanley has been more than a talented artist and dedicated teacher; he has also been a curator and has been involved in public art projects that have served marginalized communities. In an artist’s statement he described his approach to art: “As an artist, I typically work in series with limitations of size, color, and imagery. I use recurring shapes such as triangles or built subjects such as houses and boats.”
Stanley was born in Fort Cavazos, Texas, the location of a United States Army base formerly known as Fort Hood. In 1972 he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in studio art from Belmont Abbey/Sacred Heart College in Belmont, North Carolina. Between 1975 and 1977 he was the resident designer for a firm with offices in Passaic, New Jersey, and New York City. He returned to the South, and in 1980 earned two degrees from the University of South Carolina in Columbia: a master’s in applied art history and a Master of Fine Arts in painting. For a short period before graduation, he taught art at the Central Corrections Institute in Columbia.
A series of positions ensued: Arkansas College (now Lyon College) in Batesville as assistant professor of art and historic preservation, 1980–1983; as assistant professor of art at Barry University in Miami, Florida, 1983–1985; as director at the Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, North Carolina, 1985–1989, and as instructor of art history at Livingstone College in Salisbury, 1987–1989. In 1990 Stanley began his affiliation with Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, serving first as an assistant professor of art and design and director of the art galleries, and ultimately becoming professor and chair of the department of fine arts.
Following his retirement in 2017, Stanley remained active with numerous exhibitions, and residencies at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston and as visiting curator at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation (now McColl Center) in Charlotte, North Carolina. During this period he was involved in various ACE (Artists and Civic Engagement) projects. His curatorial accomplishments include Worth Keeping: Found Artists of the Carolinas (1980) at the Columbia Museum of Art which emphasized self-taught artists. He revisited the exhibition with Still Worth Keeping in 1997 at the South Carolina State Museum. In 2018 Stanley was recognized by the South Carolina Arts Commission as the recipient of the South Carolina Governor’s Award in the Arts.
Stanley’s most significant public art project was overseeing the design and artistic concept for the Charlotte Area Transit System’s Tom Hunter Station. He worked with the Hidden Valley Neighborhood Association and local elementary and middle students who gave input on the kind of imagery that interested them. He also worked with fabricators and contractors to create fifteen panels for windscreens, two steel benches, and thirty-two laser cut fence inserts. As in his own paintings, silhouettes of houses and trees dominate. For the artist it was a most rewarding experience. “We all have the ability to think with our hands and our eyes. We have to continue to find ways to utilize that and it might be in new ways we haven’t thought of before. … it’s what humanizes us.”