The Story of Tom Clark & Cairn Studios

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Life Imitates Art
by Dr. Elliot McGucken
Originally Published in Charlotte Magazine

Tom Clark retired from his teaching position at Davidson College to begin sculpting his trademark Gnomes. If you're looking for a mystical place to take a date after a movie, you'll find few places as enchanting as the windows of the Tom Clark Museum and Cairn Studio, located on Main Street in Davidson. As it approaches midnight, and if it is meant to be, then you may catch one of the Gnomes or Woodspirits winking at you, as the hallmark of Clark's art is that it is always on the verge of coming to life. From Jefferson to Beethoven to King David to the famous NASCAR drivers to his trademark Gnomes, Clark’s sculptures provide the mirror that all higher art affords--the mirror within which we see the eternal aspects of our deeper selves reflected.

In this predominantly postmodern era, where novels shy away from linear plots; poetry commonly dismisses rhyme, structure, and reason; and art often lacks a resemblance to anything other than itself, Clark’s work is not celebrated in the pages of The New Yorker or mentioned in the privy artistic circles in the Village and Soho. It is celebrated in what some would call a far more worthy arena--the popular human spirit. Clark has created approximately 1,000 unique artworks, which are reproduced for collectors in a Mooresville facility. With over 3 million collectors and 3,000 distributors, Clark is known worldwide for his wide spectrum of work, which ranges from whimsical Gnomes and Woodspirits to his exalted bronze renditions of King David, Lincoln, and Beethoven.

Cairn Studio derives its name from a simple pile of stones, a memorial the Scots made to commemorate battles and mark graves. Clark had one of his first homes built out of stone, and thus it became the “Cairn Studio."

Stories such as this haunt Clark’s works. “While teaching at Davidson College,” he explains, “I most enjoyed the classes when I could tell a story! So it was only natural that storytelling found its way into my sculpting."

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare described the storyteller's endeavor:
“And as imagination bodies forth/The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen/Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing/A local habitation and a name.”

So it is that Clark's scalpel endows inanimate clay with living expression, granting phantasmagorical emotions a permanence, immortalizing the solemn seriousness of humanity's deeper soul within King David's eyes and the fiery certitude of Beethoven's symphonies in the bronzed expression of a bust.

Another renowned poet by the name of Robert Frost once stated, “Nothing is quite honest that is not commercial," and at Cairn Studio, Clark has succeeded in making his passion his profession, his avocation his vocation, “and from two eyes, with one sight seeing" (also Frost).

And this is serious business, too. The Tom Clark operation is privately held, so they won't reveal sales figures or the number of employees, but it has afforded Clark a more-than-decent living, especially for someone who is “retired.”

Clark has a soft-spoken, quiet nature, from which one gets the feeling he would like his art to speak for itself. When I saw him in his studio, he was working on one of his creations, standing before a tall table, wearing an artist's apron, and detailing his work with a small scalpel. He owns a professorial gravitas, which makes him seem every bit as wise as his gnomes. His gentle nature speaks volumes, for it is in serene silence that his magical gnomes begin to come to life. Words could only drown out the subtleties that guide his hand in rendering an immortal emotion on a piece of clay.

Clark, who was born on October 19, 1928 in Elizabethtown, North Carolina, imbues his creations with his philosophy that “the universe is basically friendly." After earning a B. A. from Davidson College, Clark received a Ph. D. in theology from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. He then returned to Davidson, where he became a tenured professor of Christian ethics before retiring to pursue his art full time.

Although Clark has attended esteemed art schools around the globe, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School of Art, the London City and Guilds School of Art, and the Roberts School of Art in Aberdeen, perhaps his greatest training has come from enjoying and emulating the masters, just as Lincoln’s ultimate teachers were Shakespeare and the Bible. The floor of Clark’s studio features an acrostic with the names of his artistic heroes, including Michelangelo, Zorach, Bourdelle, Rodin, and his favorite sculptor, Jacob Epstein, the marvelous portraitist whom Clark credits with being able to capture the very essence of character. “Even though he often left the surface of his work rough,” Clark says, “his statues revealed more of the subject’s personality than the actual sitter."

Joe Poteat, a former student of Clark’s and the CEO of Cairn Studios, attributes the twenty-five-year success story of marrying art and commerce to the purity and diligence of Clark's artwork.

“"Tom was already a great sculptor when I met him at Davidson over twenty-five years ago, while I was a student. And his talent is accompanied by a down-to-earth approach, which seems to be a quality of many lasting spirits. Benjamin Franklin’s thirteenth precept of life was ‘Humility: Imitate Socrates and Jesus.’ [Clark is] really the kindest person, and his work exudes humility."”

Clark researches each new project extensively, studying the historical and mythological details surrounding the subject and practicing with months of sketches and rough models before offering the final rendition. During the symphony we never quite conceive of the thousands of hours each violinist has spent practicing, and Clark’s work affords the same sort of luxury, as the aesthetic of the finished statue overshadows the laborious history of its creation.

Cairn’s mold and casting process severely confines the artwork’s mold life, thus limiting the offerings to about thirty-five total castings. Each Cairn creation becomes a limited edition collectible, and dealers are responsible for registering each collector’s purchases. This facilitates a database of each piece’s history, which is updated each time an authentic piece is traded or sold.

More than sixty “Gnome Clubs" exist across the United States, formed solely for the collecting and trading of Cairn creations. As Clark travels more than forty-seven weekends a year, he often has a chance to meet with his fans and sign his work.

His fans come to him, too. “People from all over the world drop on by,” says Millie McCollum, who works in the Tom Clark Museum. “In the past month we've had folks from Italy, the U.K., and Japan.”

At the writing of this article, Clark was at work on a bust of the late Dale Earnhardt, doing his best to bring life to death through an inanimate object.

“"How does one capture the essence of a lifetime of pictures in a single bust?"” asks Poteat. “"It's very difficult, as the absence or contortion of any one detail can render the work spurious. But somehow Tom, after hours upon hours spent sketching, molding, sifting through pictures, and revising, always pulls it off."”

And he always manages to sell a bunch of copies, too, proving that art and commerce coexist peacefully in this little studio just north of Charlotte.

Elliot McGucken, himself a former professor at Davidson, wrote about the making of his film for the January issue of this magazine.