Meet the Artist: Tom Arie Donch

Tom Arie Donch boasts an impressive resume in the art world as a sculptor, specifically in public art, spanning over 30 years with projects all over the country. Tom owned and operated Interplay Designs company based here in Vallejo, that worked with municipalities to help them create art for their public spaces.

Following his retirement from Interplay Designs, Tom continues to work in the art world as a Board Member with Community Built Association and the Vallejo Center for the Arts. He was tapped to oversee this project with SolTrans for his long history of projects similar to this one.  

This project came about because of his work with Solano Transportation Authority (STA, the regional public transit agency) and Solano County Transit (SolTrans, the public transit agency for Vallejo and Benicia). The board of these agencies wanted to commission a piece by a local artist that also represented the diversity of Vallejo. 

Since a limited number of local artists have outdoor public art experience, Tom wanted to help grow the field of local potential artists by involving some of them who may not have created public art or sculptures before. Tom thought he could help them develop not only the skills needed to produce this kind of art, but also provide them with assistance on building a resume that could potentially lead to the opportunity of future projects and further expand the diversity in the public art field. He worked with Community Built Association, and together they were able to create an entire process to not only train the artists on the many skills needed to create these types of pieces but to also remunerate them so they could afford to invest their time in the process to learn those skills.  

SolTrans was able to not only help develop six local artists but was also able to have them create six pieces of public art, not the single piece that they had originally envisioned. As far as Tom knows, this process where the artists create their first public piece while getting paid served as the first of its kind. The artists also helped each other, which provided them with additional skills beyond what they have formally obtained. Tom looks forward to the public finding joy and beauty in these pieces and the future works of the artists that he was able to mentor through this process.