We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tom Chambers. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tom below.
Tom, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
My most meaningful project is “Mother’s 45s”. It was created and exhibited in 1990 in Providence, Rhode Island. It was also picked up through national search for exhibition as part of the “Parents” project at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio (1992):
https://photoartshistory.blogspot.com/2021/06/mothers-45s.html
It is a tribute piece to my mother. She passed away in 1983. It perpetuates her existence.
I matched my mother’s 45rpm records with the family photographs to create assemblages by using the hole spaces of the records to frame the images. I eventually arrived at a satisfactory combination, incorporating forty-five 45rpm records with images and a portion of each song onto an audio cassette to be used as a part of the exhibition. I faded-in/faded-out the songs, and looped them for continuous play and in order with the wall display of the photo/record assemblages.
The photographs of my mother were sequenced according to the chronology of her life, which spanned almost 60 years. When the piece is viewed along with the songs, the sound stimulus pulls the viewer from record to record (1-45) and this process has some interesting points: the maturation process of my mother is seen; the man who came into her life and eventually became her husband and my father is seen; the maturation process of her only child (me) is seen; the change in hair and fashion styles is seen; the change in automobile models is seen; and various locales throughout the United States are seen. This project (and its success) is the high point of my visual arts career for the simple reason that it involves and perpetuates my mother’s existence.
Tom, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a visual artist (digital/new media and mixed media), documentarian, curator and educator with exhibitions worldwide. He have also curated numerous exhibitions in the U.S.A., Zimbabwe, China and India.
I am currently working with the pixel as Suprematist and Geometric Abstractionist Art, and Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square”. My “My Dear Malevich” project has received international acclaim, and it was shown as a part of “Suprematism Infinity: Reflections, Interpretations, Explorations”, Atrium Gallery, Harriman Institute, Columbia University, New York City, New York (December 1, 2015 – January 22, 2016) and in conjunction with the “100 Years of Suprematism” conference, Shapiro Center, Columbia University, New York City (December 11 – 12, 2015) (Organized in celebration of the centenary of Kazimir Malevich’s invention of Suprematism and the first public display of his Suprematist paintings in December, 1915.).
I am participating in an online artist residency with St. Petersburg Art Residency (Russia) re: his work with Suprematism and Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square”.
My “Digital Suprematism – Geometric Abstraction” project will be shown (solo show) at The Wichita Falls Museum of Art at Midwestern State University (Wichita Falls, Texas), August-September, 2024. The university is my alma mater (1969).
My “Analog, Appropriation, Digital – Repurposing of the Analog via the Pixel” presentation was delivered as part of “Within the Frame: Continuum of the Still Image”, SPARKS/DAC/SIGGRAPH, December 3, 2021 (Moderated by Dena Eber and Sue Gollifer.). The 10th SPARKS session welcomed the presentation of artworks and projects that represented the continuum of image making and that revealed the essential ways that digital tools have moved it forward.
My “Black Square TransFORMations”, “Black Square Embellished” and “The Pixel as Suprematist and Minimalist Art” projects were presented as book presentations at the “Second Russian Congress on Color”, The International Conference of the Color Society of Russia, Smolensk, Russia (December 1-5, 2020); and my video, “Black Square Desecration” (“Black Square Interpretations”) was officially selected for viewing as part of Experimental Animation and Video Art Program, LINOLEUM International Contemporary Animation and Media-Art Festival, Ukraine (September 28 – October 1, 2017).
I curated the two-person (him and Max Semakov [Moscow, Russia]) exhibition, “Black Square Interpretations and Other Suprematist Explorations”, which was shown at the CaviArt Gallery, Russian Cultural Center, Houston, Texas (March 6 – April 7, 2015). A portion of this exhibition was also shown as a part of “Post Scriptum 100 + 8”, OMG Gallery, Moscow, Russia (June 8 – July 8, 2015) (I came together with seven Russian artists in Moscow to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Suprematism [1915-2015].)
I was Visiting Lecturer in digital/new media art for the Fine Arts Department, Zhaoqing University, Zhaoqing, China (2005 – 2007). He joined the department to develop and teach a digital/new media art program. My students collaborated with Beijing Film Academy (Beijing, China), Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University (Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.), Maine College of Art (Portland, Maine, U.S.A.), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, New York, U.S.A.), National Chengchi University (Taipei, Taiwan), Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S.A.) and University of Louisville (Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A.) in joint projects/exhibitions, off- and on-line.
I was invited by the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad, India to conduct a three-week, new media art workshop for its new media design graduate students. The workshop culminated in the exhibition, “NMA@NID” (2006) (The no-constraints workshop encouraged self-expression through computer technology within a fine arts context. I also documented the streets of Ahmedabad titled “Ahmedabad, India”.
I was Executive Committee Member and Juror for the International Digital Art Awards (IDAA) (2003-2005) (based in Australia). I was instrumental in expanding the content of the IDAA to include new media art, and I served as online New Media Director (2004-2005). I was also instrumental in helping to bring the 2005 IDAA Exhibition to Beijing, China under the auspices of the Beijing Film Academy. I was also invited by the Fine Arts Department, New Media Art, Beijing Film Academy, Beijing, China to give a retrospective lecture, “Dyer Street Portraiture to Pixelscapes” (April 8, 2005).
I collaborated with Choi Ok-soo, a South Korean documentary photographer, by putting together a two-person exhibition, “People to People” for the Kumho Art Center, Gwangju, South Korea (1997). This was the first time in Gwangju for a Korean and American photographer to come together to offer an East/West perspective on the Korean People and Culture. The project resides as part of the center’s Permanent Collection.
I completed a three-year tour as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in the Arts (curator/archivist and initiator/instructor [“The McEwen Photographic Studio”]) for the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe (1993-1995). I was instrumental in writing grant proposals and receiving funding (Social Science Research Council, New York City) to computerize the gallery’s Permanent Collection information. I also curated numerous exhibitions from the Permanent Collection.
I was invited by the National Gallery of Zimbabwe to exhibit “Variations on the Dan Mask” (I used an African Traditional mask from the Dan Tribe in Eastern Liberia [a piece from the Permanent Collection: PC – 6400 – 0147] as the object for the photogram, then manipulated the non-exposed area generated from this original mask form to vary the look.) (December 1995; officially opened by the U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe).
While in Zimbabwe, I also received a U.S. Government Grant via the United States Information Service (USIS), Harare to exhibit “Southwest Of Rusape: The Mucharambeyi Connection” at the USIS Gallery (June-July 1995; officially opened by the U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe; and accepted as a part of the USIS Archives Permanent Collection).
My tribute piece (mixed media/interactive work), “Mother’s 45s” was selected through national search for exhibition as a part of the “Parents” show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio (catalogue #: ISBN #0-932706-20-7) (1992). This work was also shown at Gallery One, Providence, Rhode Island (1990).
American Photographer magazine listed one of my documentary projects, “Dyer Street Portraiture” in the Notable Exhibitions section of its March, 1986 issue (“The black-and-white images record a diversity of common people in an urban habitat with an ambiance of film noir.”). A reviewer states, “I Believe my preference is your masterfully delivered jab of enlightenment. Perhaps with a slight upper cut (a short swing blow from beneath to the opponents chin) – your portraiture article helped me to condense and to fine tune my portrait style into – in your face – defined more precisely as close up and personal.”
I founded and directed a not-for-profit, photographic arts organization and gallery, “Viewpoint”, Lubbock, Texas (American Photographer magazine reviewed one of the exhibitions at the gallery in its April, 1983 issue) (1982-1983). I also founded and directed a not-for-profit, photographic arts organization, “Photoreach”, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A. (1990).
My documentary project, “Descendants 350” was shown throughout Rhode Island, and accepted by the Secretary of State (Rhode Island) as a part of the Rhode Island State Archives Permanent Collection (1990). The project received a Governor’s (Rhode Island) Proclamation. This photo album of Descendants of many of the First Settlers of Rhode Island pays tribute to the trials and tribulations that their Ancestors were subjected to during the early to middle 1600s. It offers a unique look and study of the State’s early history as it relates to images of Descendants (contemporaries) as icons or symbols to pay tribute to and talk about their Ancestors’ (First Settlers’) contributions through text extracted from The Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (and other sources).
I worked with Harvey J. Bott (Loft on Strand) to document his sculpture and assemblages. I also had a two-person show with Bott providing my perspective on the sculptor’s Fetal Form series, “Tom Chambers Looks at H.J. Bott”, Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas (1974).
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
The particular goal or mission driving my creative journey at this point in my life is to succeed as a Digital Suprematist and Geometric Abstractionist as it relates to the pixel:
During the early 2000s, I began to look at the pixel within the context of Suprematist and Geometric Abstractionist art. I equated the pixel with the works of non-objective artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Josef Albers, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Piet Mondrian and others. They generated works to establish an abstract visual language of the sublime, pure color, geometric form, deep contemplation and metaphysical pursuit of the truth.
The pixels or “Pixelscapes” – as I call them – conform with many of these non-objective artists’ works. They are a revelation for me when compared to these non-objective works generated many years before the pixel and Digital Revolution.
This body of work is derived from pixel configurations, and they stem from digitized reproductions of Kazimir Malevich’s early works prior to his Suprematism and “Black Square”. They are magnified, filtered and precisely isolated to provide geometric abstractions within color-field settings.
These “Pixelscapes” are brought to the forefront to celebrate Malevich’s latent and ultimate creativity which gave way to Suprematism with the display of “Black Square” and other works in 1915 as part of the Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10.
They rival works in Suprematism, Abstraction, Minimalism, Geometric, and Color-field art movements.
These pixel configurations are brought out large-scale. This method not only conjures up Suprematism, Geometric Abstraction, Minimalism and Color-field for consideration, but also calls forth emotions, feelings, and responses in the viewer.
They have a geometrical advantage due to their inherent, quadrilateral formatting. In combination, they provide grids, planes and juxtapositions of color. And the color scheme is in situ (natural), because of the source image.
JD Jarvis, Art Critic/Artist and coauthor of Going Digital: The Practice and Vision of Digital Artists (ISBN 1-59200-918-2) (USA):
“Tom R. Chambers has been experimenting for several years with his series of ‘Pixelscapes’ exhibitions. Utilizing the most basic unit of any computer graphic, the single pixel, his ‘Pixelscapes’ serve as colorful pathways into the purely metaphysical aspects of art which, by virtue of presenting so little, leads the viewer to so much in terms of their own emotional content. This visual poetry contains the ironic connection between Modernist philosophy which moved visual art from figurative representational pictures of the physical world into an expressive and emotional world of abstraction; and the digital realm in which the purely abstract unit of one pixel off – one pixel on, has been utilized to reproduce once again, with breath taking accuracy the physical world. Now, Chambers has shown a path by which this tool, which so often serves hyper-reality, is forced to reveal the abstract soul at its very core.”
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I wish I would have been more aware of the Arts … more tuned into my personal direction as an artist. I am a “late bloomer”, and I feel that I wasted much of my earlier life doing other non-related things to survive. It has taken me a long time to reach the point where I am at today … focused on Digital Suprematism and Geometric Abstraction with an upcoming major solo exhibition of my Digital Suprematism work at the Wichita Falls Museum of Art at Midwestern State University (Wichita Falls, Texas) in August of 2024:
https://digsup.my.canva.site/dsgawfmamsu
Contact Info:
- Website: https://chambersarts.godaddysites.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chambersdva/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chambersdva/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomrchambers/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/tomrchambers
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXa5mwa6L1kktRx43VvYdgQ
- Other: https://digsup.my.canva.site/journey-through-photography-and-the-arts https://digsup.my.canva.site/composite