Fifty years of work. A story no one had heard. Now he's in Westword.

Extraordinary work. Almost no one watching.

Tom Cross has been making art for more than fifty years — paintings created in total darkness inside a hand-dug, ten-foot-deep underground pit, a geoglyph carved into the Colorado high desert, a lifetime of output almost no one outside his circle had ever seen.

The problem was never the talent. It was that a self-taught artist with one of the most singular stories in Colorado had no bio, no press materials, and no way for the art world to find him.

Built the foundation, then found the story.

Wild Marks built Tom's professional materials from scratch — bio, artist statement, and a full press kit — then identified the threads the press couldn't ignore: the pit, the darkness, the geoglyph visible from above.

We took that story to the right people, with the right framing, and followed through from first pitch to scheduled interview.

A feature in one of Denver's most-read culture publications.

Arts reporter Toni Tresca profiled Tom in a full Denver Westword Arts & Culture feature — a seven-minute read centered on the underground studio where he paints in complete darkness, published June 4, 2026.

Read the Westword feature →