Tory Franklin’s approach to site specific work is heavily informed by printmaking and fabrication techniques used daily in her employment in the Signage and Commercial Screen Print industries from 2000-2009. After returning from the East Coast after receiving her MFA Tory focused on building out a fabrication studio to create installation components in-house for herself and other artists while transitioning from installation work to public art. She returned to Cornish to work with students as the Evening Print Studio Technician, and has stayed in that role through the merger with Seattle University in fall of 2025.

In 2012 she received Artist Trust’s GAP grant to purchase a vinyl plotter which became the backbone of her public art practice. In 2014 she received a Seattle OA&C City Artists Grant and a 4Culture Project Grant, allowing her to explore computer assisted cutting approaches for a year-long window residency at 826 Seattle with a narrative that changed every other week of a global tale for each season of the year. Tory taught a shadow puppet workshop in conjunction with the project and released 4 screen printed posters and two coloring books based on the work at Short Run Seattle small press festival. She acquired a CNC router to produce lanterns for Burien’s 2016 Arts-A-Glow festival, these backlit pieces were the springboard for several light based works for the next decade. In 2021 she added a laser cutter to test elements at maquette scale before sending files to fabricators to cut in industrial materials, this also became key for a kinetic toy theater she created for Pritchard Beach in 2022 for the OA&C Art In Parks program. In 2025 Tory started to explore screen printed enamel, so a glass fusing kiln joined the processes that she uses in her studio practice.

Over the last decade and a half Tory created temporary works for MadArt, Seattle Parks and Recreation, Bellwether 18, Arts-A-Glow, Portland Winter Light festival, Storefronts Seattle, Storefronts Auburn, Spaceworks Tacoma, The Renton Arts Commission, and The VERA Project. In 2015 she designed a permanent window piece with her sibling, Eroyn Franklin, for Harborview Medical Center that glows like stained glass. This led to the work they have collaborated on from 2019 – 2024 of three large scale pieces for Sound Transit’s Star Lake light rail station, fabricated by Pulp Glass, Krueger Sheet Metal, Reinforced Earth and installed by Kiewit. The 1 line Federal Way Extension opened in December of 2025 and is now open to all to see daily.