Blaise Tobia

Early life and education

Tobia was born in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Stuyvesant High School, and went on to study art at Brooklyn College, CUNY: his principal photography teacher was Walter Rosenblum; he studied drawing with Philip Pearlstein and sculpture with Ron Mehlman. After receiving his BA in 1974, he headed for California, to become part of the MFA program at the University of California, San Diego. Along the way, he visited the ranch of Stanley Marsh 3, photographing two recently completed artworks on the land: Robert Smithson's Amarillo Ramp and the Ant Farm's Cadillac Ranch. Tobia's art book, Cadillac Ranch Sequences, was accepted into the Ant Farm's archive in 2003.

At UCSD, he worked primarily with photographers Fred Lonidier and Phel Steinmetz, as well as with Allan Kaprow and the Newton and Helen Harrison. During that time, he worked as an assistant to Gerry MacAllister, the Director of the Mandeville Gallery; among his duties he acted as a photographer and facilitator for performance artists Lynn Hershman, Laurie Anderson and Norma Jean Deak.

Career

Tobia and Maksymowicz returned to New York City where they both worked for the NYC CETA Artists Project from 1978-79. Tobia's position came under the umbrella of the Foundation for the Community of Artists, where he worked on the team documenting the largest federally-funded arts project since the WPA. His photos of participating artists such as Ursula von Rydingsvard and Willie Birch appear in print in the Cultural Council Foundation Artists Project Complete archives of the CCF Artist Project are housed in the New York City Department of Records.

After the CCF CETA Project terminated in 1980, Tobia moved first to Oberlin, Ohio and subsequently spent two years in Detroit, where he taught photography part-time at Wayne State University. He did extensive photographic documentation of Detroit; his series on converted bank buildings, Pillars of the Community is represented in Site Matters: Design Concepts, Histories, and Strategies.

Back in New York City in 1983, Tobia returned to FCA to become an editor of its monthly newspaper, Artworkers News, later renamed Art&Artists with artist/editor, Elliott Barowitz. He became active with a variety of politically oriented artists' groups such as Art Against Apartheid, Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America and Political Art Documentation/Distribution. During this period he took his first courses in computer imaging, at Pratt Institute and SVA.

In 1985, Tobia began splitting his time between New York City and Philadelphia when he was hired to design and build a new photography program at Drexel University. In 1990, he became the first director of that program, which was among the earliest to require courses in digital photography, and he and Maksymowicz moved to Philadelphia. Continuing to develop his interests in digital technologies, he helped create a new program in digital media at Drexel and moved into that program in 2000. In 2007, he moved to the Art & Art History Department, where he currently teaches. He has had his work exhibited at the Italian American Museum in Manhattan.

Awards

Tobia has received grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and Drexel University. He has been a visiting artist at the Vermont Studio Center (2007) and the American Academy in Rome (2006; 2012; 2014).

His photographs have been included in Sculpture Magazine, Leonardo Magazine, and in books such as Lure of the Local and Site Matters and other publications.