User:Ryukin/Tom Vail

Tom Vail is an American artist, builder, and musician who specializes in photography and collage, hexagonal buildings, and American old-time or Appalachian folk music on the concertina.

Early life
Vail was born in Hollywood, CA in 1946 to a wealthy landowning family. He graduated from high school in Pasadena, CA in 1964 and went on to attend the University of Colorado at Boulder for fine art and commercial photography. He later studied at the Art Center College of Design.

Career
Vail’s initial artistic interest was in printmaking and he exhibited his prints at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1971, the Richmond Art Center in 1972, and the Cincinnati Museum of Art in 1973. He then shifted his focus to collage and produced a number of collages that included absurdist collections of commercial advertising materials on dramatic landscapes that parodied mid-century American consumerism. He showed his collages at the Washington State University Gallery II in 1976. In 2012, Vail published a book of his mezzotint collages called Western Icons. Vail's collages were shown at the Modbo gallery in Colorado Springs, CO in 2014 in an exhibition called "Create Your Own Dystopia" and his photographs, prints, and collages were shown at the Sange De Cristo Arts Center in Pueblo, CO in a show called "Going Out of Business Sale" in 2018.

Aside from fine art, Vail became a licensed carpenter and contractor and built custom homes in Colorado and New Mexico through the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. He is known to have built conventional homes, log homes, earth ships, high efficiency eco-homes, and his signature hexagonal modern hogans or permanent yurts. He designed built at least 3 hexagonal homes in Huerfano County, CO for his own residence and for others.

Vail holds a patent from 1997, jointly with William Banning Vail, for a biodegradable burial urn.

In the 1990s, Vail was a member of the school board in Walsenburg, CO.

Family
Vail is part of an old American family with several notable members. His maternal grandfather was Howard Hughes’s personal physician Verne Mason. His great uncle was Los Angeles Common Councilor and mine owner Nathan Russell Vail. His great grandfather Walter Vail, along with brother Edward Vail, is the namesake of Vail, Arizona. They owned the Empire Ranch and nearby Vail Ranch respectively. Vail is also distantly related to AT&T executive Theodore Newton Vail, industrialist Stephen Vail, congressman George Vail, and telegraph pioneer Alfred Vail. The Vail family also used to own property on Santa Rosa Island (California) that is now part of the National Park System.