TODJI IS SEEKING QUALIFIED ARTIST REPRESENTATION
BIOGRAPHY
I made my first sculptures at age 8. At age 24 I received an internship on the stop-motion animated film “James and the Giant Peach” which began my decade long career as a stop-motion animator, sculptor and puppet fabricator, working with talents such as Tim Burton, Eddie Murphy, and Dan Castalaneta, the voice of Homer Simpson.
I walked the red carpet in a tux at the Cannes Film Festival with movie stars and my photo was opposite Michael Jackson in a French film magazine when I was 26. I created my first sculpture in my “figurative Forced Perspective” style at age 28 in 1998. I built monumental bronze sculptures in Asia at age 37. I lived in Brazil and Peru for three years, and married a Brazilian woman for ten years. I’ve had sculpture studios in New York City, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Portland Oregon, and Rio de Janeiro. I survived six years of illness with near death encounters while the economy crashed in 2008 followed by bankruptcy as a self employed artist. I’ve trained Capoeira in NYC and Salvador Bahia Brazil, navigated the slums of South America, and I’ve been attacked by Indigenous people in the Amazon. I’ve been around the block, and I’ve earned a little wisdom.
I’ve been neighbors to the USA’s ultra wealthy and I’ve been neighbors to South America’s poorest poor. I am a hard working artist in the middle with a unique perspective. I believe that with privil
ege comes responsibility to uplift others, and the worst poverty is poverty of spirit.
I began sculpting as a child and I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in studio art from the University of California Santa Barbara. I later did post graduate studies in traditional figurative sculpture at the New York Academy of Art, and decided not to do the masters program when my professor asked me if I really needed the program. I later taught at the Art Institute of Portland.
I was born in 1970, the son of an Architect and Interior Designer, which formed the foundation of my value to make the world a more beautiful place for everyone. There are many talented professional artists in my immediate and extended family: Photographers, painters, musicians, dancers, entrepreneurs and teachers and I feel blessed to have such an upstanding creative family.
I was poisoned at an Indigenous festival of 13 Brazilian tribes in the deep Amazon in 2011. It was terrifying, I survived and I am still recovering. Since then, I have donated and helped raise thousands of dollars to help the same indigenous people who tried to kill me, because they need help. The chief of the tribe stayed at my house for an entire week in 2024 and we had a very cathartic visit.
My sculpture career took backseat to my self-healing work for 14 years as I moved to Brazil and Peru and learned to speak both Portuguese and Spanish so I could study Amazonian plants to try to find the antidote to the poison. Not a day passes when I don’t remember the trauma and cost to my health. I have powerful emotions to master within myself every day as a spiritual practice. It is my wish to transform that experience into inspirational works of art that inspire others to cultivate their own creative gifts to make the world a more beautiful place for all beings.
I learned a lot about the universal spirituality of nature from spending years with the indigenous and mestizo people of South America and a few close indigenous friends of North America. I integrate those experiences and consciousness with the higher principles of my own Jewish heritage with reciprocity at heart.
My sculptures are known across North America, South America and Asia for their sublime expression, archetypal form, and signature style with exaggerated proportions in my entirely original “Figurative Forced Perspective”. Museums have yet to express interest in my work, but the public and other artists have been extremely supportive. I wish to exhibit my sculptures in major Museums one day and I am seeking guidance, assistance and professional representation to help develop my career in that direction.
I’ve practiced the Afro-Brazilian martial art/dance of Capoeira for 25 years, and I’ve played drums in my Brazilian teacher’s bands in Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval for tens of thousands of people in the streets. I’ve played guitar, bass and percussion in many bands over the years, with a highlight opening for Angelique Kidjo.
Creative storytelling is one of my artistic facets. My collaborative short animated films were the official selections at seventeen of the world’s top film festivals including the Smithsonian Institution, Cannes, Sundance and Annecy; with television broadcast across Europe, Africa, Japan and HBO.
My best times as an artist were exhibiting my sculpture at Burning Man for nine consecutive years from 2001-2009, creating participatory art for fabulous community art events in Portland Oregon, exhibiting sculpture at Art Basel Miami, the New Orleans Jazz Festival, art galleries, small museums, music festivals, and charity events. My sculptures can currently be seen in public art collections, sculpture parks, corporate and private collections on four continents. “Thank You Water” is my masterpiece to date, and I wish to do more sculpture commissions of this scope.
Thank you for your interest in my work. It is patronage that keeps me working as an artist, and for this I am deeply grateful!
