Tom Loback (February 16, 1949 – March 5, 2015) was an artist, known for his illustrations of characters from J. R. R. Tolkien's 1977 book The Silmarillion, his miniature figurines, and his public artworks in New York.

[2] His best-known public artworks were sculptures made from driftwood and exhibited on the Hudson River in Manhattan, New York; those works were anonymous and his identity appeared mysterious, though it was never secret.

[3] Loback collected the materials from the Hudson River itself; when a woman scolded him for "ruining the city's 'pristine' nature", he replied that the shoreline was composed of railroad landfill.

[1] The Tolkien scholar Bradford Lee Eden commented that Loback's work was "unique" in featuring both Tolkien's scripts (Cirth and Tengwar) and Elvish languages (both Quenya and Sindarin[6]) in his art, and in his imitation of the style of medieval illuminated manuscripts.

[8] Loback wrote on Middle-earth subjects for magazines including Beyond Bree and Little Gwaihir, and the linguistic journals Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon.