Here's a special guest post by Colorado College 3D Arts Shop Supervisor and local artist, Andrew Tirado. Tirado has worked with giants in the art world, such as Chuck Close, and was a student of Floyd D. Tunson at Palmer High. Floyd D. Tunson: Son of Pop is on view through Jan 20.
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) |
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). |
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?
Floyd Tunson's Haitian Dream Boats. Image courtsey of the artist |
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.
Floyd D. Tunson: Son of Pop
On view through Jan. 20, 2013
On view through Jan. 20, 2013
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