Tom Foolery Exhibit

‘Coughing Blood Together’ Lights up VA Gallery

“Little moments of frozen theater” are currently on display in the MHCC Visual Arts Gallery, a thought- provoking series of creative scenes inviting visitors to peek in and ponder the artist’s messages and sculpting skills.

Photos by Prisma Flores

Montana-based artist Tom Foolery has been creating these armature dioramas – featuring small-scale figures crafted from found items – for years, beginning as a fun hobby. “I took a mousetrap, and I sorted it so that you couldn’t spring it, but it looked like it was sprung, and I painted it white wood and black metal. And then I put a little red heart on it, and I called it ‘It’s debatable.’ ”

This led to him making a diorama in his 1965 Rambler dashboard that lit up when he turned on the headlights. It surprised and amused many of his friends.

The exhibit here at MHCC is entitled “Coughing Blood Together” was inspired by politics – an endless source of inspiration for the artist.

“There’s just no end of material to work with,” Foolery explained. “I still think that somebody might get a new perspective looking at these little pieces.” Approximately 30 assemblage dioramas line the walls of the large space, placed inside recycled housings, such as old movie cameras, computer monitors, and more. 

Many of Foolery’s pieces depict war, as he lived through the Vietnam War era, when fear of the U.S. military draft loomed over the collective youth of the country. When he left the National Guard, an art instructor encouraged him to follow his passion, which led him to the University of Washington to study painting.

He got a job at the Boeing Co. to support his studies, but he and his coworkers were laid off merely a year later, as part of massive cutbacks that plunged the local economy into a depression.

“You could buy a house in Seattle if you took over payments. People were that desperate,” Foolery said. “(Home) equity was just like, it’s yours if you can afford it, but nobody could afford it. So it was hard to imagine that Seattle would become what it is today” – a mostly vibrant, trendy metropolis filled with high-tech mega companies.

“While I was painting, the majority of my time, it (diorama creation) was like a hobby,” he said. “And [then] when I go to San Francisco in the fall of ’76, I put together a painting studio, and the assemblage work took over. And from there I just kept doing more and more assemblages.”

Foolery crafted a whole series of carrots as airplanes, “to satirize war,” he said. Then his uncle gave him a tiny movie camera. “Initially, I was just doing a play on voyeurism, because looking at art is voyeuristic in its own sense. And then by working with little scenes where there was a movie crew and a naked lady and you had to peek into them, it’s like another layer of voyeurism.”

That piece spawned several years of creating dioramas in movie lights. From there, he moved on to vending machines, “like that ballpoint machine that we have at this exhibit,” making up part of the MHCC showing. 

As for the inspiration behind each piece, “it’s often a single object and, and I want to work with it… what am I going to do with it? Where am I going to take it?” Foolery said.

“What do I want to say with it? And then it evolves from there. So I’m using all the bags of tricks I’ve ever developed for myself in the new work, and I’m having fun doing it,” he said. “So as cynical and jaded as most of it is, I’m having fun doing it.”

Tom’s advice for an MHCC student here is to “stay true to yourself – whatever you do.”

To reach out to Foolery after viewing the exhibit, contact him at lazytf@gmail.com. 

All photos by Prisma Flores