Featured Artist: Tom Friedman

Tom Friedman is a master of taking everyday objects and transforming them into works of art. He has formed works from things like toothpicks, soap, asperin, and chewing gum. While the complexity of these pieces is impressive on its own, often there is a concept, a joke, or an idea that he is trying to comunicate.


Untitled, toothpicks, 2005


Untitled, ball of 1500 chewing-gum between two walls, 1990


Untitled, pencils, 1995

His untitled pieces using toothpicks, pencils, and gum are testaments to his perseverence, showing an agonizing patience and attention to detail. The works plays with the idea that nothing is too ordinary to be art. I'm also interested that so many of his works are untitled. Perhaps that is to force them to speak entirely for themselves?


Untitled (Total), 9 cereal boxes, 2000

Another ordinary object that Friedman has painstakingly transformed is a series of retail packaging. In the above image, he cut up nine identical cereal boxes into small squares and reassembled them in a single larger version of a Total box. He's taken a familiar object out of its original context and given it new life.


Untitled (Excedrin), sliced retail packaging, 2000

Untitled (Lucky Charms), 1 cereal box made into 4, 2000

I love how all the works in this series feel like their humming with activity, vibrating so quickly that we can't get our eyes to focus on them.


Untitled, soap and hair, 1999

Unlike artists such as Jeff Koons (whose works are not intended to have meaning beyond their viewers' initial reactions), Friedman is all about deeper meaning, the surprise, or "the second look." Works such as his soap and hair sculpture are intriguing at first because you're not quite sure what you're looking at. Looking closer, you become amazed at the perfection with which he has created the circles. Finally, as you realize what the circles are made of (pubic hair), your initial response is to recoil back.