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Artist Andrew Tirado, working on his latest sculpture. image source
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Tunson’s prolific artistry used to astound me. Now it just ticks me off.
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Here's Andrew Tirado wondering "How does Floyd do it!?"
(image source) |
I’ve seen the career retrospective, "
Floyd D. Tunson: Son of Pop," at the FAC three times
and plan to make it back for a few more before it comes down.
The exhibit is stunning in its depth and its
breadth, another show ably curated by Blake Milteer and the museum’s
indomitable staff. The work fills the
entire second floor of the museum and, seemingly bursting at the seams,
overflows in places down to the ground floor.
But beyond the ideas, beyond the evident love of color and form and
markmaking, it clearly whispers to me, “Catch me if you can.” And that ticks me off.
Any time a student finds a teacher/mentor, it can have a
life-long impact, and that’s just the role Tunson has played in my
life. Although I had been the
prototypical “class artist” since I was a wee lad, I leaned toward a career as
a writer both prior to having Tunson as my high school art teacher and then again
briefly in college after leaving the gravitational pull of his charismatic
presence. In high school, however, as an
ever increasing amount of time spent in the art studio would attest, I was
primarily focused on art. I blame Tunson for heavily
influencing my then newfound focus, and heck, he’s continued to be just as
important to me now: he has been one of the few personal sources of artistic
inspiration for me in terms of energy, dedication to his craft, and work ethic
for nearly thirty years. But even such
genius has its limits and it’s high time for Tunson to take a long, relaxing
siesta.
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| A picture from Tirado's archives. Floyd D. Tunson was Tirado's art teacher at Palmer High and thought highly of Tirado's work, believing he'd be a big New York artist a couple years out of high school. (image source) |
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Another photo from Tirado's archives, from his
time as an apprentice for Chuck Close right after
Close suffered a spinal artery collapse (image source). |
As if his artistic vigor wasn’t already evident in class, it
was confirmed when I first stepped into his live/work space. Tunson’s Manitou Springs loft brims with
evidence
of a vital exertion with color, materials, and ideas, from unfinished canvases
large and small, to sculptures and silkscreens, to buckets, boxes, and bins
full of fodder for his 2D and 3D creations, to the photo darkroom, with its
chemical experimentations, to the throng of paintings and sculptures hanging salon
style on walls and ceiling.
Elsewhere,
storage rooms are filled with yet more completed work and commonplace materials
yet to be transformed into art – seeming endless amounts of both. I visited Tunson and Flo [his wife] recently and noted
with disgust that their loft is just as full of work now, during the
retrospective, as it was before – still veritably bursting with yet more pieces
not on display in the building. In protest of this evidence of limitless
creativity, I just recently “liked” Tunson’s new Facebook page, solely for the
satisfaction of “unliking” it just as it hits its first 1000 likes. Enough is enough.
It’s not just physical materials that Tunson salvages, but others’
work that he unabashedly steals. A few
years out of college, but well prior to returning to making art myself, I was happily
building wood strip canoes, when Tunson
visited me as he is wont to do and took an avid interest in their sleek shapes
– one of the main reasons I was drawn to making them in the first place.
Only, while mine took months to build, Tunson
called one short week later and said he’d made two or three boats – what were
to eventually coalesce into the profusion of vessels that constitute his
Haitian Dream Boats piece at the Fine Arts Center.
How annoying is that?
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Floyd Tunson's Haitian Dream Boats. Image courtsey of the artist
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Tunson retired from teaching in 2000, and, not surprisingly
to those of us who knew just how much he invested in his teaching and his
students, experienced an artistic and depressive slump that lasted through the
fall and into the winter months. One
might’ve assumed he’d have been excited to be able to make art without the time
and energy constraints that teaching represents, and I’m sure he was. But it can’t have been easy to leave a
profession that he had invested so much of himself into for decades. Unfortunately, by the late winter of the
following year, he was back on his game.
And, what’s worse, it seems he’s only going to keep getting better.
