Tony Fitzpatrick
Tony Fitzpatrick
Lab Grant Resident
The collages are cobbled together from vintage print ephemera and handmade paper with splendor and precision; they are visual poems, reflecting on matters of place, history, and sense of being. Big Rock Candy Mountain delves deep into the transient nature of Depression-era hobos. Here, their language, ideograms, battles, and songs resound throughout the intimate works. The lore of the vagrant hobo complements Fitzpatrick’s ongoing romance with the cities of Chicago, New Orleans and Brooklyn. The exhibition embarks upon the roads, towns, and train tracks that lie within and between metropolises, futhering the artist’s depiction of America. His voice references both the historic and current, as the culture surrounding hobo lore may now become parallel to our own. Reflecting on hobo iconography, Fitzpatrick writes:
“[It] is no accident that one of the largest Hobo ‘Jungles’ lined west Madison street in Chicago and another lined the newly built levee system in New Orleans-- an American sub-culture was born in the wake of the civil war; complete with its own slang-infused jargon and pictogram ‘alphabet’ scrawled on buildings and trestles all over our nation -- it was a codified language spoken by the dispossessed of our country-- a survival tool for hard-times ; not so much unlike now.”
About the Artist
Tony Fitzpatrick (b. 1958,Chicago, IL) is a Chicago-based artist best known for his multimedia collages, printmaking, paintings, and drawings. Fitzpatrick's work are inspired by Chicago street culture, cities he has traveled to, children's books, tattoo designs, and folk art. Fitzpatrick has authored or illustrated eight books of art and poetry, and, for the last two years has written a column for the Newcity. Fitzpatrick's art appears in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC. The Neville Brothers' album Yellow Moon and the Steve Earle's albums El Corazon and The Revolution Starts Now also feature Fitzpatrick's art. In 1992, Fitzpatrick opened a Chicago-based printmaking studio, Big Cat Press, which exists today as the artist exhibition space Firecats Projects. Before making a living as an artist, Fitzpatrick worked as a radio host, bartender, boxer, construction worker, and film and stage actor. (Source: Artist’s website)
For more information, please visit their website: https://tonyfitzpatrick.co
