Tory Franklin moved to Seattle in 1995 to attend Cornish College of the Arts.  After receiving her BFA in photo and drawing she worked on diverse bodies of work and began showing consistently in the greater Seattle area.

Tory strengthened her self-taught screen printing skills by working in several screen shops between 2002 and 2005.  In 2003 she received a printmaking residency at Old Dominion University in Virginia and in 2004 she became one of the first set of instructors at the VERA Project’s screen print program. 

In 2001 Tory founded the now defunct Sublevel3, a nomadic unit that produced shows in live venues, as well as producing print and web based projects. Through this group she organized the group shows Pattern Vs. Happenstance, Speak n’ Spell, and Sick.  In 2003 she founded the SS Marie Antoinette, a collective art studio, press, and arts and music venue, which she managed until moving to the East Coast in 2005.   While at the SSMA she hand screen printed the 50 page catalog that accompanied the second Girlie Fun Show exhibition at Bumbershoot 2004.

Tory was in the first group of emerging artists selected to participate in the 2003 pilot of the Artist Trust’s EDGE Program, an 6 week intensive course on art business practices.  In 2004 she was one of 25 recipients of the Lucky Strike Seattle Art Pack award, creating an edition of 200 cigarette packs, each containing a set of 20 hand printed 2” x 3” portraits.

In fall of 2005 Tory moved to New Jersey to receive her MFA at Mason Gross School of the Arts, part of Rutgers University.  While at Mason Gross she concentrated on making print and paper installations and teaching drawing.  She continued to show in Seattle, and was part of the CAA MFA exhibition in New York City.  She also participated in an exchange exhibition with Kunsthochschule für Medien in Köln Germany.

In the fall of 2006 the Seattle Opera and Ballet Company asked her to re-install her installation Façade that had been exhibited in King County’s Gallery 4-Culture at Mc Caw Hall in the Paul Allen Room for 6 months. 

Upon completing her degree Tory participated in a 3 week internship at Singapore Tyler Print Institute, assisting the artist Ghada Amer in the creation of screen print, offset litho, and large scale handmade paper originals and editions. Before returning to the states she traveled around Europe for 2 months, visiting Skulptur Projekte, Documenta 12 and the Venice Biennale in addition to many, many baroque interiors.

Tory spent the next 3 years in Philadelphia where she continued to work on large scale installation works in addition to small prints and cards.  She showed consistently in the Tri-state area as well as Seattle. Through her employment in the signage industry and collaborations with engineers at The Hacktory her installations have expanded to include cut window vinyl and hand printed circuit boards with LED lights.

Tory moved back to Seattle in 2010 and is currently working on a body of installations based on fairy tales from around the world. She is the Drawing Studio Supervisor at Cornish College of the Arts, and has returned to teaching screen print at The VERA project.