"Cast in Creativity"
Tom Corbin forged his own path to success as a scuptor

You can smell the sculptor's wax melting in blue Rival Crock-Pot in the corner. Opera plays on the boom box over on a workbench across the basement. Under a fluorescent shop light, Tom Corbin dabs clay on a sculpture. When it's done, this statue of a woman will see for thousands of dollars. Corbin makes bronze tables, benches, lamps, chandeliers, sconces and sculptures in his River Market studio. He may be the most prolific artist in Kansas City - and chances are, you've never heard of him. But you've probably seen his work: the figures at the Firefighters Memorial Fountain in Penn Valley Park, the Children's Fountain in the Northland and Kauffman Memorial Gardens near the Country Club Plaza, for example. And the life-size figures of Ewing and Muriel Kauffman outside the Kauffman Stadium. His posh Mediterranean-style stucco home, just off Ward Parkway, belies the stereotype of the starving artist. It should. For the last five years Corbin Bronze Ltd. has sold more than $1 million worth of bronze. Last year sales were up 47% - to $2.5 million.

You won't find Tom Corbin lingering over a latte at the coffee shop with the Kansas City culture crowd, bemoaning offenses against art. He's up about 6 A.M. reading the newspaper, drinking coffee and running, biking or swimming. A 47-year old triathlete, he's usually training to compete. At 5'11" and 180 pounds, he's trim. He was a business major in college. "I don't quite fit the traditional artistic crowd," Corbin says. "Early in my career I was intimidated by people and credentials. But over time I realized those credentials don't necessarily indicate the amount of talent an individual has or their dedication to succeed at their craft." Although it is hard to categorize artists, you could say that Corbin's found a way to satisfy his left brain and right brain - he's been able to be creative and make money, too. "I do think I have a really cool job," he says. "My personal goal is to remain excited about the artwork I am putting out on a daily basis. If it sells, that's great; if it doesn't sell, it could be a problem." He seems to have avoided the "problem" so far by knowing how to create art and market it - something he learned during his former life in advertising.

Corbin sayshe had a "pretty straight-forward childhood in the Midwest," growing up in Centerville, Ohio. He's a brother to three sisters. His father was a civilian Air Force employee, and his mother was a substitute art teacher. As a child he liked drawing but eventually succumbed to the lure of sports in high school. He was a defensive tackle and held the Centerville High School shot-put record until five years ago. He heeded his father's advice, majoring in business at Miami University of Ohio and minoring in art. He stuck with it for two years and then quit. "I has my fill of that," he says. "I felt I had to get into something more creative. So I quit to take a big adventure." He bought a 10-speed Schwinn bike and joined a cross-country bike caravan. His group cycled 2,500 miles over 56 days, from Durango, Colorado, into Canada. At night he'd read the career guide What Color Is My Parachute? He learned that "taking risks can be good." So when he got back, he switched careers to advertising. He hired on at TravisWalz and Associates, with a mission to find new accounts. He found new clients and he found time to learn about sculpting and bronze casting. He didn't understand how bronze artists got commissions, so he called J.C. Nichols scion Miller Nichols at home and made an appointment with him at his Plaza office. "I asked him if he needed any original art on the Plaza," Corbin says, smiling at his own naiveté. Nichols said no, but he did need some repairs made. Corbin fixed assorted cherubs and the McDonald's sculpture for Nichols. That led to his first commission, two bronze plaques at the original Nichols headquarters and four bronze benches that still sit around the fountain on the northeast corner of ward Parkway and Wornall Road. The Plaza work let to a commission to do an eagle for a war memorial in Richmond, Missouri. And although he says he was never interested in doing wildlife art, "they waved a check in front of my face and I said, "I am interested in doing wildlife." He quit the ad business in 1986, renting a loft in the same building he's in now, at 201 Wyandotte. Other artists were moving in there, too, as the failed River Quay was being reborn as the River Market. Free of his advertising, he had time to think about his art. "At the start of my career, I was immediately drawn to traditional narrative sculpture," Corbin says. "I was drawn to the challenge of taking clay and modeling it into a virtual living, breathing thing. Luckily, my fascination with the traditional form conveniently coincided with the business opportunities that presented themselves at the time." His technical ability to produce lifelike statuary helped get him commissions. He sculpted Ewing and Muriel Kauffman from photographs; he says he used himself as a model for the Firefighters Fountain, dressing like a firefighter in a bunker coat and helmet and studying himself in the mirror.

Tom and Susie Corbin stretch out in armchairs in their living room. The table before them and the table behind them were created by Corbin, as was the lamp between them, the figurines on the front table and the candlesticks on the back table. The pair started dating in 1986 and married in 1989. Their daughter, Ali, is 8. Susie is a docent at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. She says she can't quite put her finger on what makes Tom tick. "It's not recognition from other people," she says. "I think it's really for his own enjoyment. His dad was an engineer. I think he's like his dad - in some ways I think he rally likes having an idea, then figuring out how to execute it." Susie says Tom's just a "regular, great guy, with tons of friends." He's a funny playful father who likes to toss Ali around in the swimming pool, go on bike rides and walk the dog. "He doesn't wake up in the middle of the night with a sketch pad and frantically sketch," she says. "He doesn't have a tortured soul." About the time the Corbin's were married, Tom started getting into furniture design. "From Etruscan to Deco, to African, to a kind of bastardized French Provincial," he explains, "my furniture design has been all over the map." In 1991 a friend set up a meeting for Tom with Holly Hunt, a world-class furniture designer and gallery owner. After a meeting in her Chicago office that Corbin says lasted "a few minutes," Hunt agreed to put a Corbin table in her showroom. Eventually the company ordered more tables, then lamps, statuary - the works. Quoted in the Financial Times of London in 1999, Hunt says this about her design tastes: "I try to keep the best of class. If it's modern, it's Liagre; best American designer, then Dakota Jackson; best bronze work, Corbin." Corbin's work sells at 20 U.S. showrooms and galleries including Hunt's and his Kansas City gallery in the River Market. His statues and furniture sell from $3,000 to $10,000 apiece. Because he's been concentrating on limited-editiion sculpture and home furnishings, he hasn't done as many public art commissions in recent years. When he does, the price tag is usually in six figures. His statues and furniture also have been featured in movies, including "True Lies," "Ransom" and "A Perfect Murder." Corbin says a new movie called "Changing Lanes" with Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson will have Corbin bronzes in it, too. It is scheduled for release later this year or early next.

Corbin dabs clay at a tall, thin female form. He works from memory, sometimes from books or photos, but almost never from models, he says. Most of his designs are simple geometric shapes: circles, squares, spheres and cones. His style for human sculpture has evolved into simple elongated figures, he says. "After a steady diet of the traditional forms, I felt that I wanted to reach out and create a style that people could point and say, 'That's a Corbin,' whether that style is good or even bad in their eyes." A calendar and a legal pad sit on a nearby easel. Unlike the stereotypical artist who works when inspired, Corbin schedules his sculpting time. Other entries show appointments with a bronze foundry and a photographer. The calculator on this desk helps him figure the bottom line for his business as well as the proportions for the model he's sculpting. He segues from a discussion of profits to his design philosophy. What he's often trying to express is "attitude," he says. "Attitude can be found in the figure's back, a hand on the hip, a leg pointing in a certain directions," he says, gesturing at the piece he's been sculpting. "This female figure has an attitude. She's confident, cocky and full of herself. That's what I am communicating. I consider myself much more of an emotional artist and designer thank an intellectual or academic. For me to consider a piece of mine successful, it must move me psychologically, rather than intellectually. And I hope the viewer, passer-by, whomever, would have a similar emotional response." He says his decision several years ago to move away from a realistic style of sculpting to his sparer, more elongated style was "not just satisfying commercially. Sales went up dramatically once I set upon a different course of style." It irks him, though, that some artists would criticize him for being financially successful. "I have problems with those purists out there that say 'You sold out,'" he says. "I say, 'I'm doing the art I like.'" And just how much does a successful Kansas City artist and designer take home? Corbin, wearing his business-casual outfit, a T-shirt, shorts and sandals, leans back and considers this answer. "What I make is comparable to what any top executive in Kansas City would make," he says, grinning.