Highlighting Tod Pardon

Artist list

Tod Pardon

Tod Pardon received a Bachelor of Fine Art from Alfred University and a Masters of Fine Art from Syracuse University, our own Allison Barnett’s alma mater. His work is in the permanent collections of the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute in Washington, and the American Craft Museum in New York, among others.
 
In 1986, the artist began working part-time under Earl Pardon. Tod Pardon became a full-time assistant to his father where they oftentimes exchanged ideas of aesthetics and craft. Together they established Pardon Designs. Following this chapter, equipped with all he learned under his father’s teachings, Tod Pardon went on to establish himself as one of the most technically proficient jewelers of his generation. 
  
We are pleased to feature the work of an artist who has known our own Allison Barnett for over three decades, as well as a maker who has been represented by the gallery since our very beginnings in 1999.

Pardon’s Stopi Brooch & Sculpture is endowed with the iconic style and expertise of the artist’s own invention. Combining his contemporary, modernist perspective with artwork inspired by the Aegean Cycladic art movement, the natural essence of the Masai Mara Reserve in Kenya and pre-Colombian Colima figurines, his work becomes an indelible figure for the body and place. An elongated, anthropomorphic frame is built out of sterling silver. Distinct shapes culminate together to form exquisite and clear stature of form. Curves protrude from its surface, rounding the full bounty of its belly to the elegant extension of its neck. 
 
Tendrils stretch from the figure’s pointed legs, positioned on miniature bases of hematite and dappled with delicate, tiny drops of 14K gold. At the top of the piece, Pardon fills a square head with a circular mask, inlaid with an orange face and bright blue eyes, giving his work altogether a mysterious, exotic, and cheerful disposition. The work is an illustration of masterful design. The Stopi Sculpture & Brooch possesses a silver pin, eloquently fitted for adornment. Pardon also constructs a custom wooden pedestal so that the piece remains an organic expression to adore in any space. 

Magnetic artistry breaks through the kaleidoscope of his imagination, as his evolving canvas challenges and rewards curiosity and creativity. Through evident pictorial vibrancy, collisions of color, and disparate use of material, Pardon conveys his reaches to comprehend humanity in its irony, contradictions, and inherent dichotomy.

I learned early on that art was a way of life, and that it was all-encompassing, serious, and very real. [...] Over the past twenty years, the content in my works has been influenced by many elements that are vast, varied, and personal. I see it as an expression of life’s inherent duality and instability. [...] There are contradictions of anxiety and humor, good and evil. The humor and color play an important role in contrast to the sometimes-screaming pieces… It’s like you can’t see the light without the dark. Or as Rabindranath Tagore, the well-known poet from India says, “Truth in her dress finds facts too tight, in fiction, she moves with ease”. 
/Tod Pardon