About Tom Stanley

Born in Fort Hood, Texas, Tom Stanley grew up in Concord, NC, and attended Belmont Abbey and Sacred Heart colleges in Belmont, NC.  He received a MA in Applied Art History and a MFA in Painting from the University of South Carolina in 1980. Since then, Stanley has served on the faculty at a number of institutions including Arkansas College (now Lyon College) in Batesville, AR; Barry University in Miami, FL; and as the director of the Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC. Currently the Chair of Fine Arts at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC, he was also the first director of the Winthrop University Galleries from 1990-2007.

His work has been featured at SECCA, Winston-Salem; gallery twenty-four, Berlin; Hampton III Gallery, Greenville, SC; the George Gallery, Charleston; and if ART, Columbia, among others. His curatorial projects include Worth Keeping: Found Artists of the Carolinas for the Columbia Museum of Art; New South Old South Somewhere In Between for Winthrop and the Levine Museum of the New South; and Still Worth Keeping: Communities, Preservation and Self-Taught Artists in collaboration with the South Carolina State Museum, and many more. His public art endeavors include Balancing Act in Simpsonville, SC, Journey in Raleigh, NC, and the Winthrop Monolith in Rock Hill, SC. He has also been commissioned by the Charlotte Area Transit to create a public installation at the Tom Hunter Station on North Tryon Street in Charlotte.