My name is Ben Meeker. I was in the MFA Program with Walsh from 1989-92.

I also got my BFA from Tom’s wife, Linda Rosenus, at San Jose State University.

So, I was in the Walsh family in more ways than SIU. I have enclosed a short remembrance about Walsh’s influence on my life as an artist. The current art-work that I’m including does not represent the major body of my career work

influenced by Tom and Linda.  (Most of that is on slides and videos, I know…videos? of installations and Performance Art) but it is some public commissions and my current focus.

Walsh taught me three major things, first year, that formed the rest of my artistic/professional life:

Sculpture can be any or all of Art processes and expressions: Walsh didn’t coerce anyone into the “metal casting” cubby. I started as a caster but evolved into an installation/performance artist with a minor in film study and featured  a poet and an anthropologist on my MFA committee.

No artist is an island:

The rap sessions; open studios at the “glove factory”; iron pours; pig roasts; open exchanges with the glass, ceramics, metals, fiber and film departments; and the multiple opportunities to exhibit at Faner, Allen, the  theater and the student center, created a vibrant and wildly creative community.

Your MFA is a license to teach:

Walsh showed me that the best teach by example. The teacher-student relationship is a conversation and mutual evolution, not a top down dissemination of information and wisdom. Walsh’s paradigm has guided my 30+ year teaching career.

Thank you Tom for making us all better artists, teachers, and arts professionals and communal artists