Photograph courtesy of Tom Friedman Studio
He has carved a self-portrait out of an aspirin; sculpted monsters out of wire and spray-foam insulation; fashioned a tarantula from his own hair. Born in St. Louis, educated at John Burroughs School (where he returns this month to accept a distinguished alumni award), Tom Friedman is probably the most successful contemporary artist to ever come out of St. Louis. He’s also often labeled as a conceptual sculptor. While that’s true, that doesn’t quite encompass the scope of his work; he’s said that he just wants to make art that will “slow down the process of looking.”
“For Tom, being an artist is about ideas,” says independent curator Charlotte Eyerman, “but he’s also an incredible craftsman.”
Indeed, even Friedman’s most rarefied conceptual works—like 1000 Hours of Staring (1992–97), a sheet of typing paper Friedman literally stared at for a thousand hours over five years (it was described in a museum catalog as “stare on paper”)—are the end product of obsessive work requiring large amounts of time.
Eyerman, former modern and contemporary art curator at the Saint Louis Art Museum, brought Friedman’s Ream to the New Media Series in November 2009. The piece is a 500-frame film sequence comprising drawings made on every sheet in a ream of paper. Eyerman notes that Ream is not only conceptually clever, but also shows off Friedman’s drafting skills and fluency with digital media. He is spookily adroit with materials (one self-portrait, a 3-D representation of what he might look like after a motorcycle accident, was made from humble construction paper). So much so, he’s often compared to a magician. As Eyerman noted in her essay for Friedman’s 2010 show, “Up in the Air,” at Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, magic was one of Friedman’s boyhood hobbies. Now, she says, “He almost has a magician’s ability to conjure, and that ability to amaze comes through in his art.”
For instance: Monster Fly (2008), which Friedman calls “my first biological piece ” and which was part of an exhibit at Gagosian Gallery, “Monsters and Stuff,” in the summer of 2008. Monster Fly consisted of a realistic-looking housefly, rendered slightly larger than natural scale, affixed to the gallery wall. Nearby, an even tinier figure—a little guy carved from wood—fled down the wall.
“In that case, I used Play-Doh for the body, because I thought that would be funny,” Friedman says of the fly. “And then it’s got legs; I used wire for that. The wings needed to be kind of a thin, clear material, so it’s just the really thin plastic from a cigarette pack. And then the lines in it are just my hair that I inlaid into the wings.”
Friedman used a similar process to manufacture a swarm of 100 bees: “It was meant to have this initial sense of ‘What the hell’s going on, did someone unleash all these bees?’ And then a couple of seconds later, they’re not moving around…”
“He’s not just a recorder of facts in the world,” Eyerman says. “He transforms what he sees, and there’s a witty and perceptive edge to everything he makes. And he thinks about matters of scale. Sometimes Friedman works are teeny-tiny, and sometimes they’re enormous. He likes to play with perceptions and expectations.”
Eric Hanson, a mathematics teacher at Burroughs who taught Friedman in the 7th and 11th grades, remembers the artist as good at math, especially more visual disciplines like geometry; he also remembers that he was on the wrestling team, and drew cartoons for the school newspaper.
“He would make some sculptures that were really weird and strange, but not in a bad way at all,” Hanson recalls. “And the kids would have great fun with it. They would say, ‘How did you come up with that idea? It’s so neat, it’s so different.’ He would come up with things that had nine heads, like little hydras. He wasn’t afraid at all to do that. That shows confidence, just like participating when ideas are new.”
Bob Walker, now retired, taught sculpture at Burroughs for 43 years, and had Friedman as his student from 7th through 12th grade.
“I wish I could tell you that it was obvious to me that Tom was destined to be a successful artist that he’s become,” Walker says. “It’s true, he did do very well with throwing pots. But even in that stage of his life, he did like to work with things that were not the usual media. I was thinking about that straw man he made, and of course we just didn’t have those [kinds of materials]. If I’d known he wanted them, I would have brought them of course!
“I believe that Tom could have possibly been thinking along the mindset of a jazz musician,” Walker continues. “He knows the basic melody, but his creative instincts tell him to stray from that path in order to achieve greater satisfaction and truth. The results can be so original that he can’t duplicate the work note for note. Tom has become a most creative individual, who never stops dreaming and questioning.”
Friedman’s best friend (and prolific collector) Jim Probstein says that in high school, Friedman “lived in the art building.” They roomed together the year after undergrad, when Friedman was mostly painting and drawing. Probstein’s collection now includes Friedman’s prints, drawings, and sculptures of all scales. Probstein’s favorite is a figure made out of tinfoil. One of Friedman’s signatures is his use of everyday objects—gum, hair, typing paper, Styrofoam cups, superballs, drinking straws—as material. As Nico Israel noted in a 2002 review in Artforum: “This is no mere trompe l’oeil: Friedman’s trick is to let homey, everyday objects usher in a profound uncanniness.”
“It’s actually a guitarist,” Probstein says of the tinfoil figure. “He’s got the guitar hanging over, and he’s really thin like some of the great rock guitarists, and leaning back in the macho pose. I think that piece came from all the music we used to listen to growing up, like Led Zeppelin and The Who…it sort of embodies all of that. I think it’s one of the greatest pieces he’s ever done.”
Though his 3-D works seem to have the most power to astonish (including a giant sphere made from 1,500 chewed-up gumballs and the giant Band-Aid, complete with blood on the gauze, that dangled from monofilament with dozens of other manufactured objects for “Up in the Air”), Friedman’s still a master of flat works.
“It’s the forest behind my house,” he says of a meticulous drawing done with colored pencil, graphite, and charcoal. “It was a very tedious process of drawing. In one respect, it had the same sort of focus as the other work, but I like twisting things a little. Like with the fly. And when you do a lot work that’s much more engineered, people wonder whether you can draw or not,” he laughs. “So it was kind of a funny thing, saying, ‘Yeah, I can draw.’ There’s a lot of branches to my work.”
This month, John Burroughs School’s Bonsack Gallery hosts an exhibit of Friedman’s work, curated by William Shearburn of Shearburn Gallery, John Van Doren of Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, and Jim Probstein. The exhibit is free and open to the public, with an opening reception with the artist April 8 from 5 to 7 p.m. Visitors may also view the show April 9 and 10 from noon to 3 p.m., and April 11 through 13 from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. For more information, call 314-993-4040 or go to jburroughs.org/arts/bonsack-gallery.
