Auguste Rodin, the famed French sculptor of “The Thinker,” once told a student, “I see you are very talented. Now what are you going to do with it?” That student repeated the adage to his student and down the line until it reached the ears of Thomas Marsh, a sculptor and parishioner of St. Isidore the Farmer Church in Orange. With his talent, Marsh has crafted a surfer poised to conquer the waves, a woman holding aloft the flaming symbol of democracy, Christ pleading for a drink from the cross, and many more works of art.
As a sculptor, “you’re given a glimpse, only in a tiny way, into what must have been so pure and simple for God, and that is a privilege that goes beyond any description,” Marsh said.
Marsh, 71, grew up in Sioux City, Iowa. He always loved art, but at age 18, he made the conscious decision that sculpture would be his life’s work. After graduating with a degree in painting from the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, he moved to Los Angeles and earned a master’s in sculpture from California State University in Long Beach.
After graduation, he received two job offers. The first was working for Lucas Films designing new creatures for their recent hit — Star Wars. Soon after, he was offered an apprenticeship with a prominent sculptor in Rome. He packed his bags and headed to Italy. “My kids have chastised me for it ever since,” he said. After the year in Rome, he set up shop in San Francisco, though he often returned to the Eternal City as an art tour guide. For years, first in person and then online, he’s taught at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
Though Marsh was raised Lutheran, “when I was 15, thinking I was very radical, I became an atheist,” he said. Twenty years later, he came back to Christianity, which he credits to Our Lady, the Holy Spirit, the prayers of his mother and the time he spent in Italy. “All the time I spent going into churches, even when I was an atheist, had a profound effect on me,” he said.
One of Marsh’s more prominent creations, “To Honor Surfing,” stands in the coastal town of Santa Cruz. The bronze statue depicts a young man barefoot and in swim shorts, a tall, narrow surfboard at his back and his eyes fixed on the horizon. Marsh and his former student Brian Curtis, a surfer, won a national competition to make the memorial. To help get the look just right, Marsh asked two members of the original 1930s Santa Cruz surfing club to design and shape a redwood board, “just like they would have done when they were teenagers.”
In 1989, Marsh watched the unfolding events in Tiananmen Square in Beijing with horror. “I was riveted by the bravery of a million students and citizens demonstrating for democracy in a brutal Communist country,” he said. In the wake of the bloodshed, “I led a group in San Francisco to rebuild the statue that the (Chinese) students had made as their symbol that was destroyed along with — the best estimate is — 10,000 (people) killed by the troops and tanks.”
The bronze statue, “Goddess of Democracy,” was unveiled by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi in the center of San Francisco’s Chinatown on the fifth anniversary of the massacre. Marsh later designed a plaza in Washington, D.C., for the Victims of Communism Memorial with his “Goddess of Democracy” statue as the centerpiece. In 2007, President George W. Bush dedicated the memorial.
Marsh met his wife, Siobhan, at a Bible study and nine months later they were married in 1995. A few years later, they entered the Catholic Church together at the California Mission of San Juan Bautista. His statue of St. John the Baptist reaching his hands toward heaven now greets visitors to the centuries-old church. The couple has three children: Benjamin, Joseph and Cecilia.
After the birth of their children, they looked to move to a small town close to a major cultural center and international airport, and they settled on Orange. The African American community there has been a loyal patron of his work, said Marsh. A sculpture of a hat and gardening gloves commemorates George Herman Lewis, a Black man and Orange native who was the floral designer for the Rose Parade in Pasadena. A sculptural relief honors the Orange Graded School, a 20th-century school for African American children. A portrait of Gussie Taylor, a civil rights leader and educator, hangs in the middle school administrative building.
Some of Marsh’s favorite pieces are his religious sculptures. At St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Church in Fredericksburg, he created seven sanctuary sculptures, including John and Mary at the foot of the cross and Christ on the cross depicted at the the moment he uttered “I thirst.” At St. Isidore, he created a Marian rosary walk set on the slope of the hill below the church. The statue, called “Regina Coeli Christus Rex,” depicts Mary holding baby Jesus.
“There are special moments when modeling a figure of Christ or of Mary,” he said. “I feel in particular that it is an indescribable blessing to be able to work on such an image that can be venerated. The transformative power of religious art — it’s a responsibility, it’s a privilege, it’s a blessing to be able to work on those.”
