Tom Dean

• Name — Tom Dean • Born — 20 November 1947 • Birthplace — Markdale, Ontario, Canada • Education — visual art at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University, Montreal) (1960s) • Known for — multimedia and multidisciplinary artist

• Illustration — Peaceable Kingdom Dean, born in Markdale, Ontario, attended Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in the 1960s. In Montreal, he co-founded one of Canada's first artist-run galleries, Véhicule Art Inc in 1972, in 1973 he co-founded Véhicule Press which published avant-garde art material in the English-language. From 1972 to 1974 Dean published Beaux Arts magazine with Stephen Lack. In 1976 Tom Dean moved to Toronto and from 1986 to 1989 he lived in New York. He now lives in Toronto. In 1992, he was an artist-in-residence at York University in Toronto. In 1997, his sculptural project Excerpts from a Description of the Universe III (1987) made of wood, steel, cast iron, felt and porcelain, which was part of a larger series that attempted to describe the natural world, was purchased by the National Gallery of Canada. In 1999, he remembered going to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa when he was a teenager and seeing a conceptual art show there. He said about it: "I was just thrilled by it. It was an alternative, another way of thinking that made me say, 'Yes! This makes sense to me.' I can’t figure out nine-tenths of it, but it suited me from the beginning. It was a vehicle for obscure ways of thinking."