Artist, sculptor, and jewelry designer.
Geoff Thomas
For more than 30 years, Geoff Thomas has worked across jewelry, sculpture, and painting, developing a visual language defined by form, symbolism, and meticulous detail. Geoff Thomas Designs brings those disciplines together in sculptural jewelry designed to be worn, collected, and kept.
The Origin
Raised in Northern California by artist parents, Geoff grew up surrounded by painting, sculpture and music. He originally planned on pursuing a career in finance, but in college he got diverted, and his artist roots took hold. During that time he and a group of friends started an action-sports T-shirt company called Internal Power. That venture eventually led them to open IP Gallery in San Diego in 1998.With little money but deep connections to the local creative community, they created a space for the work they wanted to see. The gallery brought together paintings, sculpture, tattoo art, graffiti, and other forms of underground and outsider art. Geoff had only recently begun painting and sculpting, and the gallery gave him a place to exhibit his own work alongside other emerging artists. The image created for IP Gallery remains the foundation of the Geoff Thomas Designs logo today.Around the same time, Geoff was working at a metal sign shop and becoming increasingly interested in metal. After seeing a copper cuff, he decided to make the bracelet he could not find anywhere else. Using a jeweler’s saw, he cut the design from copper, soldered it to a copper plate, shaped it by hand, and completed his first piece of jewelry. The response encouraged him to continue. He bought books, taught himself silversmithing, and began making bracelets, rings, and pendants.
From the Archive
The Evolution
Geoff continued painting and sculpting while developing his skills as a silversmith. After spending two years in Hawaii as a tattoo apprentice, he returned to Los Angeles and opened the Geoff Thomas Designs gallery in Santa Monica in 2005. The space brought his jewelry and paintings together and marked the beginning of Geoff Thomas Designs as it is known today.
His work continued to evolve through traditional metalsmithing, mokume gane, photography, Photoshop, and computer-aided design. Each new medium expanded what was possible, but the most significant shift came when Geoff discovered ZBrush.
Digital sculpting gave him the freedom of working with clay inside the computer. It brought together his experience in sculpture, metal, anatomy, and design, allowing him to create organic forms and levels of detail that were difficult to achieve through traditional methods alone. That combination of traditional process and modern technology became the foundation of his current work.
THE WORK
In 2018, Geoff created a pendant for Joe Manganiello based on one of Joe’s Dungeons & Dragons characters.
The project led to a collaboration with Joe’s streetwear brand, Death Saves, and brought Geoff’s approach to digital sculpture into a complete jewelry collection.
Geoff later created the TechSkull collection under his own name. He had never set out to become known for skull rings, but the collection quickly found an audience and became a defining part of his work.
For Geoff, the skull is not simply a symbol of death. It is an anatomical form shared by everyone and a reminder to value the time we have. Its structure provides a canvas for exploring proportion, surface, technology, nature, and ornamentation. His interpretations are defined by precise anatomy, sculptural detail, and forms developed to be considered from every angle.
THE WORK CONTINUES
Geoff Thomas Designs is the ongoing expression of a life spent creating across mediums. Jewelry remains at the center of the studio, while painting and sculpture continue to shape the ideas, forms, and imagery behind each piece.
The result is a body of work defined by the hand and perspective of one artist. Work made to be worn, collected, and kept.
