Tom Thayer Works

2012 Whitney Biennial , Whitney Museum of American Art. Top: Artworks, bottom: artworks activated in two-day performance.

This Life is Nothing More than Waiting for the Sky to Open, 2011, acrylic, ink, tempera, pigments, glue, graphite, crayon and collage on cardboard, string, wire, felt, wood and canvas, 72 x 48 inches

Considering the Moons and Stars, 2011, Mixed Media, 32x27.5 inches

A Gesture in the Quiet of the Witching Hour, 2011, acrylic, ink, tempera, pigments, graphite, crayon, wax and sewing on felt and canvas, 53.5 x 62.5 inches

Nature Scene III, 2013, collaged paper, graphite, tape, linen, 80 x 64 inches

Awakening (paper puppets and scenery from Scenographic Play animation), 2011, mixed media, 30 x 40.75 inches

Ialas Saladiw stills, 2009, animated-puppet, music video for the No-Neck Blues Band

Installation view, Sensory Picture and S(ƒ) ∝ 1/ƒα. Pictured in Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY.

Sensory Picture (left) 2012, paint, ink, pigment, graphite and glue on polyester, found afghan, found embroidery, found doilies, rope, string, acrylic mirror, cloth and wood, 57 x 63.5 x 8 inches

S(ƒ) ∝ 1/ƒα (projection) 2010, color video with sound, running time: 15:00 minutes

Still from Scenographic Play, 2010, cardboard, string, wire, electronics, animation, video manipulation and live music, dimensions vary

A performance for Incohative Listening + Centerless Portrayal, an immersive night of four-hour long performances organized by Keith Connolly and Jay Sanders for the Knight’s Move performance program, SculptureCenter, Long Island City, NY

Black Fowl Reflection, 2008, mixed media, dimensions vary

This piece is seen installed at the 2008 White Columns Annual, White Columns, New York, NY. It was also used in performances at The Living Theater , New York, NY and Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, NY in 2007. It consists of a bird made from black construction paper that stands over a record player spinning a record I recorded. The bird is wired up with electronics. It moves, pecking and scratching at the record. It plays the record with its beak, in which a record stylus is wired.

This is a collaborative project I do with Dave Miko. We make “video paintings” that create strange optical effects. It’s difficult to tell what is painted and what is animation. The paintings have a holographic quality, and are continually changing. Viewing them is a similar experience to watching a fire burn in a fireplace, or as Dave has aptly said, “They look the way a 9 volt battery tastes.”

about bio contact studios music

The Conjurer, 2016, mixed media

Carefully into One's Mind, 2019

acrylic, ink, pigments, graphite, conte' and sewing on canvas, modeling compound, paper, high-density polyethylene, aluminum, wood, string and wire

25.5 x 18 x 6.5 inches

Accompanying Text:

I dressed myself in an elegant downpour of lace and Hellenistic stage shoes. And like some exquisite Victorian antique, I stepped carefully into my mind. It was completely dark inside. I looked like a tablecloth of snowflakes as I moved across the mysterious heavens of my empty head. “It’s dark in here. Perhaps stars will come out to light my way.” I watched, head craned to crown, but no stars came. So I took a needle and made some holes in my dome. “There they are!” Everywhere I have gone in the world, I have seen swallows perched on power lines. My head was no exception. Under the light of my new constellation, birds assembled on a high wire like beads on a string. At night I saw my dreams. Like a collection of Egyptian sickles harvesting corn in the old kingdom, they tirelessly tended to the rubble of my soul. They sang like a whale in an abyss to no one. Their music was no siren’s song. More often, it could be taken for a riot among wild animals fighting to the death or the clamor from some great breeding grounds of a hundred thousand seals shattering the Arctic silence.

The Sun Can Read Your Mind, 2019

acrylic, ink, pigments, graphite, and crayon on canvas, modeling compound, cardboard, wood, yarn, fabric, string and wire

32.5 x 24 x 6.25 inches

The sun can read your mind. And this cosmic furnace has an interest in punishing you, so keep your mind still and empty. Even whispers need to be extinguished with precision. Each day, when the sun appears, the night sounds its damp trumpet of discontent. The sun arrives and mocks us. It draws pictures of naked people and builds animals out of garbage and McDonald’s wrappers in the forest. The sun hurts the feelings of the entire world. The sun runs late and lives in a candy-covered house in the woods and drinks gasoline, and eats mice. The sun is so old that to look for its origins, we have to go beyond recorded history. Who took the first picture of the grotesque sun? The sun is as old as theater. What is the sun doing every night? Where does it go? The sun’s face is like a gong. The sun lives in a crumbling salt palace with its mother-in-law. Some say they have become a couple, and others say the sun is slightly lopsided, and before it dies, it will become so heavy that a teaspoon full of it will weigh more than Mt. Everest.

When one finds them self in the home of the sun, the workaday tools of the sun will be strewn about. Hot drinks fume on the stove, and round reflectors hang on the walls. Your dribbling fever will eat at the palace hinges, quickening its race towards an inevitable collapse. Heaven is there too.

But when the sun leaves and the shadows of the forest collide with the sky, the night loses you in its arms. Secretly the sun’s admirers take it down into their burrow at night. The owls and hermit crabs are there. The cold air and humidity are there. All to watch the sun ripen and blossom underground. They all sit together drinking laundry detergent in the erotic, melting shadows of the sun’s unstable biology. At night, the moon and the earth are left alone together in the darkness. The moon was ripped out of the earth by the sun eons ago when the earth was still wet. It left us with the Pacific Ocean. The moon is the earth’s child. The moon pulls at the ocean impulsively. One day it will finally grab hold and pull itself home. The sun will look out from its palace and watch the earth and the moon disintegrate.

In a Desert, More than Anywhere, the Architecture of One's Mind Stands Revealed, 2019

acrylic, ink, pigments, ash, graphite, and crayon on canvas, modeling compound, paper, high-density polyethylene, wood, string and wire

30.5 x 31.5 x 5 inches

In a desert, more than anywhere, the architecture of one’s mind stands revealed. Unlike thoughts in other places, with innumerable forms and foes to focus upon, thoughts in the desert mind land only upon themselves. Their ephemeral flood seeps back into their own parched, cracked existence. In a desert, the quietude of a retreating mind is merely an illusion. Its long slanted shadow sweeps down the sands, drowning in its own unknowns.

Called into this World from the Heavens, 2019

acrylic, ink, pigments, graphite, crayon, glue and sewing on canvas

43.75 x 32.75 inches

From herons to hawks, kinglets to wrens, birds are called into this world from the heavens. Some are improved with colored tops or a musical pipe inside. Some are immune to gravity and float like a hot-air mobile. Some birds are large vessels of gold that date back to the second millennium BC where they sat guard in dark trees and clutched branches with their sharp feet. Scientists recently opened one such bird to find it was also made of copper, lead, asbestos, beryllium, lithium, coal, oil and tin.

We see birds everywhere we go. One reason birds are so abundant is they can eat almost anything: plants, dirt, insects, lizards, snakes, other birds, nuts, berries, grains, garbage, blubber, tinfoil, masking tape, plastics, soups, rodents, pets, fish, stones, and sand. Birds can store meals for later in large pockets inside their bodies. They can flip on their backs and swim for long distances. They can whistle a tune. They can brighten a somber winter with a splash of color. Truly birds touch us in unexpected ways.

The flights of birds are studied as omens. When we see a bird in flight, we see a doorway. In comparison, human flight is crude and wooden. But do birds really exist in this world? Just because we hear and see them everywhere, doesn’t mean they are really there. Have you ever wondered why we don’t hear birds at night? Where do they go? Over the millennia, birds have developed hard beaks for digging vast underground structures. While we sleep, just inches below us the earth is like a bee’s nest, teeming with birds. All night long they feast on worms and mate with one another.

The famous performer, Bing Crosby, once fell through the earth and into a nocturnal bird hive. When he explained what he had seen, people only thought he was seeking popularity for its own sake with his story. And even though he looked unnaturally tired and thin, and was wearing a cheap gold barrette on the left side of his hair to keep the loose dirt from falling into his face, he wore an expensive jeweled one in the back of his hair, shaped like a bird.

Standing Figure Used in Conductive Paper Plays, 2019

mixed media

dimensions vary

We live in a celestial illusion., 2019

mixed media on paper

approx 25 x 25 inches

Accompanying Text:

We live in a celestial illusion.

If you don’t believe me, ask the unstable atmosphere of your own hands. Ask them if they are dying or if they are giving birth. Ask them if they are laughing with you or just unable to run away. Few people have looked their hands straight in the eye.

The only thing regrettable as our dread of the unknown is our restless impulse to patch its facade of knowledge with conjecture. Ask the whaler. Ask the breathing hole. You will see. Ask the tundra. Ask the musk ox holes. They will tell you.

The musk ox is a giant skunk. It has holes in its eyes that spray musk when it feels threatened. Ask it, and you will see. Sit with it in the methane, covered in its musk ox musk. The snowshoe rabbits, with their sore throats, dressed in their winter coats, can watch you get speared and trampled.