Artist Tom Knapp dies at 90, Obituary, The Albuquerque Journal, by Dianne L. Stallings / Ruidoso News, N.M. (TNS), Wednesday, July 13th, 2016 at 9:44am

Bronze sculptor and printmaker Tom Knapp, who spent many years in Lincoln County with his wife and fellow artist, Dorothy Bell, passed away in his home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico on July 8. He was 90 years old.

Dedicated to art and to his family, Knapp was prolific and successful in many forms of artistic expression, including bronze and wood sculpting, printmaking in linocuts and wood engravings, stained glass, mosaics and jewelry making.

Well-known figures in the Ruidoso art scene in the 1980s and early 1990s. Knapp and Bell lived and worked in their home and gallery, a local landmark known as The Buckhorn in the valley east of Ruidoso Downs, where customers might drop in to view the art produced by the couple, then stay for a cup of coffee and conversation. The twosome also occasionally taught art classes at the Carrizo Lodge, which at the time was a popular summer hub drawing artists and would-be artists from around the country.

David Long, who with his wife Judy Hathcoat owns Long Coat Fine Art, was the exclusive dealer for Knapp’s work in Ruidoso. He met the artist after buying the gallery six years ago.
“We became good friends,” Long said. “He was as much a part of the New Mexico art scene as any artist I can think of. Back in the 1980s, he did a big series of sculptures of endangered species. The salt water crocodile is at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas” and others are displayed in galleries and venues all over the world.

“I will miss Tom a lot. He was fun to talk to. I would call him every couple of months,” Long said. About twice a year, they would meet in El Paso, where the couple kept a condominium for Knapp to visit the Veterans Administration Hospital and pickup his supply of medications for the next six months. They would exchange pieces of artwork to keep the exhibit in Ruidoso fresh, he said.

“They loved their lives in Mexico,” Long said. “They got to live life as they wanted to. He would have been be 91 in September and Dorothy already is 91. He was a wonderful guy, a peaceful fellow. Their wishes were that when they were gone, their ashes should be brought back to Ruidoso. This is where they wanted to spend eternity.”

Perhaps, Knapp’s most famous work is the installation piece of a football player he was selected to create when the Rose Bowl Stadium was built in Pasadena.

“For years. he made a pretty good living from that,” Long said. “He had a 28-inch tall version of that same sculpture and he held the copyright on it. They kept the mold in California and would contact him every year. Whoever was being inducted into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame, they would give them one of those sculptures. When he knew his health was declining, he sold them the copyright last year (to ensure that the statue could be awarded) forever.”

Knapp also was well known for his Native American Dancers, a series of ten different members of North American tribes performing their traditional ceremonial dances. According to family members, the dramatic collection took Knapp on a quest of more than 30 thousand miles and nine years in travels all over the Southwest, the Northwest, south to Mexico and north to Alaska.

Knapp was born in Gillette, Wyoming, September 28, 1925. He is a veteran of World War II, and the Korean War, serving in the United States Navy. He studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland CA, and the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. He then went to work as an animator for the Walt Disney Studios. Today, his works of primarily Limited Editions can be found in more than 200 private collections, as well as many museums.

Coming from Ruidoso, Knapp moved to San Miguel de Allende in 1995, with his wife, Dorothy Bell Knapp, a pastel artist.

Tom Knapp is a bronze sculptor recording the modern Western scene. He was born in Gillette, Wyoming in 1925, and since 1971 has lived in Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico. His wife is artist, Dorothy Bell Knapp.

He is intensely interested in the contemporary Indian and strives for ever-fresh way to depict the dignity and culture of the present-day Indian and Westerner. Of this commitment, he said: "There's a Western art fad in progress, and things that happened 100 years ago are currently being re-examined for use as subject matter. I feel that this is largely wasted effort, After all, such artists are trying to breathe life into something they didn't actually experience." This interest in Indians dates to his adolescence when a Plains Indian tribe camped near his family's ranch every summer.

There were no museums near him when he was growing up, but Army service during the Korean War exposed him to sculpture and painting shows. After the war, he attended the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and the Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles when he was nearly 30.

He was a Walt Disney artist for many years, and also had a job as an animation artist for Mountain Bell Telephone Company in Albuquerque. New Mexico. He decided that he would quit Mountain Bell "whenever commissions from sculpture equaled my regular salary." After quitting, he "suddenly realized that self-employment had cut my total income in half," but since 1969, he has retained his full-time commitment to sculpture.

Knapp casts his own bronzes in the backyard of his studio, as part of a neighborhood "Pour In" that has been described in New Mexico Magazine. His series of contemporary American Indian ceremonial dancers was featured in Art of the West, which quotes Knapp as claiming that "vitality, movement, is the most important thing in sculpture, not the detail." His work is in five public collections. He is listed in Who's Who in American Art.

Sources:
Contemporary Western Artists by Peggy and Harold Samuels, courtesy Adobe Gallery
www.classicbronze.com/limited2.html