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 Conceptual Works
1972 - 2006
Tom Ferguson
  

 

Though painting seduced and held me most of my working life, I once seriously considered transferring to flimmaking.

I got interested in a mirror one day, walking around the house with it under my nose, watching the room above me moving by, a unique perspective that drove me to get a camera, spending 1/2 my savings on it. Then I stupidly realized I couldn't really afford the film. Time-lapse was my way around that. It would take me months to use up a roll of 3-minute film. I made a flim called Arrival, setting the camera on a tri-pod facing a large window which I more or less randomly snapped when walking by, catching the seasonal progression for a year, 1971-2. I did several of these, later using them in video works, late 1980s.

I probably had heard of Warhol's Empire & had seen Nude Restaurant. Also an experience on a hill overlooking my old neighborhood through binoculars pushed me in that direction. As I scanned the neighborhood I could hear Mom's calling their kids, dogs barking, maybe a little crowd noise from the ball park. I felt like a tourist, observing as an outsider, watching a wonderful unfolding. This reminded me of what was called Conceptual Art, which I experienced in NY & in Lucy Lippard's book, Changing, where often an ordinary object was taken out of context so its singular profound presence could be felt. The genre of Still Life painting could be looked at this way, not just an exercise in representation but as an honoring of and meditation on the sacred. Of course a work succeeds or not according to the intent, skill and wit of the artist, as well as the beholder.

So occasionally i'd get an idea along these lines, still do, and some of those ideas i'd execute. This section of the site includes those I have pics of.

 

Reliquary Nails
Of Knowledge of Trees
Evolution
Coffee Stains
Salt 'n Pepper
Egg Attack
Key Text
Class Room
POPauto 

Clever Table 

Long/Brief Days 

Radiator Epipany 

the link below is a "conceptual" piece but  
I put it in a catergory with the painting from   which it derived so you'll your back arrow if   you want to come back here  

48 Soldiers  

 
   

 

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