About Norman Tuck

I was born in Lebanon, Pennsylvania in 1945. In 1950 my family moved to Miami Beach, Florida where I, supposedly, grew up. In childhood I loved building toy models, especially flying airplanes made of balsa and tissue paper. At 16 I began tinkering with British sports cars.

In 1963 I entered the University of Florida where, after drifting through various majors, I met Professor Geoffrey Naylor in the Art Department. He showed me that my tinkering abilities could be utilized in the making of mechanical sculpture, and I was hooked, building my first kinetic piece in 1966.

I moved to New York City upon graduation in 1967. I got a job repairing MGs at a dealership on 74th St. In 1970 I left New York to attend graduate school and returned in 1972 with an M.F.A. in sculpture. I began doing installation and delivery work for some of the galleries that were then springing up in the Soho area. I established a relationship with O.K. Harris Gallery, where I was to have solo exhibitions in 1974 and 1977.

Somewhere around 1985 Joe Ansel walked into my life. He was, at that time, on the staff at The Exploratorium, a large science museum in San Francisco. He introduced me to the world of the science museum and helped to arrange residencies at the New York Hall of Science as well as the Exploratorium.

Since then my work has been shown primarily in science museums. A solo exhibition of my work, entitled Art Machines , has traveled to seven museums in the United States and the Technorama Museum in Switzerland.

I live in San Francisco with my wife, performance artist Brenda Hutchinson. I occupy my time building variations of my popular piece The OscylinderScope , struggling with HTML, and creating new works of art and science. I am currently working on a piece involving an interaction between electricity and light.

I would like be shown more often in art venues, where the pieces will be less subject to torture at the hands of thousands of delighted children.