Our friend Tom Lehman has many talents. Besides co-founding and running a successful business, Tom is a ceramicist. Those pieces that he spins so passionately will make their debut at his first solo exhibition, Worse Is Better.
If you are lucky enough to visit Brooklyn's Vanderbilt Republic this weekend, you will see smooth ceramics pressed to abstraction with Tom's fingerprints, and dripped with paint. So, basically, they're as unique as Tom's business concept for Genius.
"Ceramics started when I was in high school, and to graduate high school I needed a fine art credit. At the time I was very irritated by that because I thought, “I know what I like and I don’t like art.” I took the art class and ended up really liking ceramics and wanting to do a lot of it. Then I did it on and off until we started Genius, but then I quit. I quit because I thought I didn’t have time and in some ways that was true—I didn’t have as much time. So I got back into it this year and what I like is that it’s a metaphor for work because it really embodies the quantity theory; and for me at least, ceramics occupies a good niche in the world where you can become good at it as a normal person. Also, I think there’s something important about a tactile exercise that mentally trains you—you can’t look at the internet, you can’t look at your phone."
