A native of Philadelphia, Steve Tobin is arguably one of the most diverse and energetic sculptors of our time. He has consistently pushed his own creativity and the contemporary idiom in all the media that he has thus far explored. If a single individual has been responsible for transforming the technical and artistic scope of bronze, glass and ceramics, it is Steve Tobin.

As Donald Kuspit wrote in his compelling essay in Steve Tobin’s Natural History, “For Tobin, ‘the event itself is the only truth,’ ... and every object he uses is a kind of event, a combination of elements that form a pattern, or are integrated into a system. Virtually all of (his) objects have fallen on hard times, that is, they are no longer “eventful” — they have lost the life that held their parts together and are on the verge of disintegrating. The mission of his art is to restore them to life — to liberate the life that still exists in them, so that art becomes a triumph of life over death.

In 2005, Tobin installed the most important work of his career, the Trinity Root, at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway in Lower Manhattan. The bronze sculpture, which stands as the only permanent art memorial to the events of September 11, 2001, is a bronze casting of the stump and root system of the ancient sycamore tree that saved St. Paul’s Chapel across the street from Ground Zero on 9.11.01. The sculpture, which measures 13’ high and 25’ diameter, was dedicated on the four year anniversary of the attacks.

Tobin’s monumental work is on exhibit at the Kouros Sculpture Center in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Smaller sculptures are currently being shown at the gallery’s Manhattan location on East 73rd Street.