Tomey Tunks Flyer

The illustration I’ve picked this week is a scan of a flyer that I came across at a small exhibition opening from this past summer. It was a small show in Columbia faculty member Anna Koon’s garage that she turned into a small gallery space to hang work. The work varied from sculptures to instillations to paintings all crammed in a tiny space, but all in all they all worked well together and weren’t too overpowering. In the back corner I saw a painting on canvas that looked similar to this particular illustration and I spent a good amount of time gazing at the overwhelming amount of detail. The artist is a student named Tomey Tunks. I personally have not met him, but I enjoy his work and can relate to his process, style and amount of time he takes to make a piece of work. I also spend hours upon hours filling in a pen drawing or paint on a canvas with immense amounts of small detail that may get easily looked passed by the viewer, but I know it’s there, and in my mind it has to be there, no matter how long it takes to create.

On a table below his painting in the exhibition was a stack of his flyers amongst stacks of business cards from other artists. When I looked at the table my eye was immediately drawn to his flyer. All they where were black and white photo copies roughly 5”X7” on computer paper, but they were a hundred times more appealing then any other card or piece of information on the table. There were three or four different images to choose from in a stack, giving the viewer a choice of designs to choose from. Not only do I enjoy this particular artists work and appreciate the process and time spent to create it, I like how he got the attendees from the show interacted with his work, even if it’s in the slightest way. Everyone who attended the show could take a small, inexpensive piece of his work and be reminded of his work and imagery, more so than from taking a plain white business card from a stack with a name and an e-mail on it. Over all I loved and appreciated his work and the idea of giving out small pieces of work to anyone who attended the exhibition.