Adrian Tans

Woodstock Town Smiler | Artist

Adrian Tans

Adrian Tans is a painter, illustrator, and sculptor living in Woodstock, Vermont.  As a self-taught artist, he has appreciated  success as an oil painter for galleries throughout New England and as a children’s book illustrator.  Over the years he has also developed a passion for impermanent art through his work as an internationally award-winning snow sculptor; and more recently, through his ongoing public art project, The Woodstock Town Smiler.

“The Smiler”, as is it has come to be known, is a free-standing chalkboard in the center of the village where Adrian has been creating large detailed chalk pastel drawings every few weeks for the last few years.  The project is part performance art, as he works in full view of the public who often stop to talk about the process, art in general, or the theme on which the current piece is addressing; and part an exercise in the value of impermanence, due to the inherent nature of the medium. With each drawing requiring a minimum of a dozen hours, sometimes double that, there is a fascination created with the anticipation of, viewing of, and occasionally the public’s participation in the erasure of these elaborate drawings.  It has come to be something of a group exercise in non-attachment in the community, which Adrian finds to be a continual source of interest and inspiration.

Adrian works as the director of youth services at The Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock and lives with this son and two dogs in the village.