Steve Tobin shows one of the clay sculptures that has just been “exploded” at the St. Andrew’s School in Barrington.

Zahra Barzan, left, a 10th grader from Jamestown, and Tim Underwood, an 11th grader from Coventry, anticipate the minor explosion that’s about to occur during artist Steve Tobin’s talk.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

Steve Tobin, of Pleasant Valley, Pa., visits St. Andrew’s School, in Barrington, where he talks to students about his sculpture, painting and pottery, and about his life as a world-renowned artist whose works include a 9/11 monument in New York City.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

Students at St. Andrew’s School, in Barrington, look through a book of the work of Steve Tobin, an artist who works in clay he explodes, who came to the campus to speak with students yesterday.

BARRINGTON — So, acclaimed artist Steve Tobin says, let’s go blow some stuff up.

Smiles peek out on the faces of several St Andrew’s School students. Cool.

Forget staring at some painting of water lilies from their desks, mulling over impressionism and the other “isms.” Time for some fresh air and ideas on an outdoor terrace overlooking the private school’s campus. Tobin readies the instruments of imagination. There’s clay, of course, and a pencil.

But it wouldn’t be art without firecrackers and a torch.

Tobin creates designs on each small clay piece, including by the use of your shoe tread if he likes it. He uses the pencil to nestle the little red firecracker inside the clay. And trusted assistant Jesse Sklut, a St. Andrew’s senior who is Tobin’s nephew, prepares to lower torch over the clay-firecracker gumbo.

Before going forward, Tobin explains that the sculpture means to capture movement between order and chaos, a relationship woven into our lives and in nature.

“So stand back,” he says.

At first, nothing, then pop! Small bits of clay go airborne, invariably decorating two glass doors that lead from the terrace to the arts building. At least once, a small chunk gets serious lift and hurdles over the roof.

Each explosion creates a different sculpture. Tobin says one brings to mind a time-lapse photo of a bullet tearing through a balloon. Others look like miniature temples. Some seem to take on features of some rare coral or shell from the sea bottom.

“I really liked what I saw,” Tobin recalls of his initial clay experiments, “and that really grew into me making 4,000-pound exploding clay pieces.”

Some of Tobin’s sculpture is on another scale: He became the first artist to have a permanent Sept. 11 memorial installed near ground zero in New York, an achievement that stands out in part because other attempts have run into political and other opposition.

Tobin’s Trinity Root 9/11 memorial, installed in September 2005, is quite different from the firecracker-induced sculptures. It includes a mold taken from the stump of a sycamore tree that was knocked down by the force of the falling towers but which came to rest in such a way as to protect the St. Paul’s Chapel at Trinity Church. The monument branches out like a tree. Several people, including his St. Andrew’s School nephew, helped bring the memorial to fruition in Tobin’s Pennsylvania studio.

St. Andrew’s School yesterday hosted this artist, who has drawn notice from art-world arbiters such as The New York Times for his works. Tobin shared his experience, artwork and some demonstrations with several classes as the artist-in-residence under the Happy White Endowment Program, which provides for an artist visit each year.

A smaller version of the Sept. 11 memorial is included several Tobin works at the school. He notes one that was to have been used for an album by Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead guitarist and vocalist, who died before it could happen. There’s a small battleship with various figures atop it – a play on Noah’s Ark. Another piece is an alligator with a motorcycle on top of it.

“The way we ride over nature,” he explains to students.

In another room, Tobin shows large sculptured bowls that include crystal designs in them that he describes as being like snowflakes – only created in the heat of a kiln.

“I thought it was really cool,” says Jake Moreau, a 10th grader from Lincoln, after Tobin’s presentation. He and students Patrick Martin, of Barrington, Nick Campagna, of Bristol, and Cameron Rodrigues, of Barrington, pose for a photo by the table where the clay/fireworks sculptures took place.

Classmate Sklut has perhaps the best day using the torch to transform his uncle’s clay into sculptures. He spent time in Tobin’s studio growing up.

Tobin graduated from Tulane University with, of all things, a bachelor’s degree in theoretical mathematics. He impresses upon any would-be serious St. Andrew’s artists that it’s important to study a range of things so a mix of learning informs their art. When he speaks about his art, he at times draws from math and science. He has lived in several countries, knows three foreign languages, and has attained virtuosity in the art of blowing glass.

“I really didn’t want to go out in the world and get a job, sell insurance,” Tobin says.

But what left some St. Andrew’s art teachers agog is that he never does work on commission, often how artists earn a living. Tobin says he insists on the “high road” of not doing commissioned art, in which he would be subject to what the buyer wants. He gave the Sept. 11 memorial to the church, he says. Other work has earned him money.

While Tobin says he learned more traditional techniques, such as using a pottery wheel, he stresses the critical importance of original ideas.

“If I did a figure, Michaelangelo’s would always be better, so I couldn’t do a figure,” he says.

Besides the exploded-clay pieces, some of his art is made from animal bones. He’s also worked with termite hills, roots and has painted.

“So, does anybody want to be a professional artist?” Tobin asks.

One student says she wants to try it out.

“You can’t just try it out,” he says, if the aim is to be a professional. And to get there, he urges, “don’t follow the normal path.”