Thomas Woodruff’s Freak Parade
Thomas Woodruff
Hardy Marks Publication 2010
On
a cold and windy night in 1963, Thomas Woodruff, a peculiar cub scout, carried
a large American flag for his troop in the New Rochelle, NY Thanksgiving Day
Parade. The event left lingering scars. He was known in the neighbourhood as
the boy who staged elaborate puppet shows in his darkened suburban basement.
While
still in his twenties, Woodruff collaborated with the avant-garde theatre
director Robert Wilson on the decor for his opera Edison, and adapted and
storyboarded his stage spectacles for television. He has contributed
award-winning illustrations to every major periodical in America, including the
memorable back page series “Rock and Roll Still-Life” for Rolling Stone in the
early 1990’s. He has created the book covers for novels by Ann Tyler, Robertson
Davies, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, and many others.
Woodruff
has had over 20 one person exhibitions, and his paintings have been included in
museum shows internationally. His major gallery works are created in series. In
the past these works have often been elegiac in nature and have dealt with the
AIDS epidemic. Some of his major projects are The Secret Charts (1994), a
series of tromp l’oeil scrolls depicting an alphabet of loss; Apple Canon
(1996), his collection of 365 individual apple “portraits” to “keep the doctor
away”; and All Systems Go (1999), images organized as “missions” incorporating rocketships, Woodruff’s meditation on the end of the
millennium.
Freak
Parade is his most ambitious project, five years in the making, bringing
together images of circuses, sideshows, Roman frescoes, theatre and movie
posters and even religious paintings to create a very singular style. Each of
the images includes a caption, tale or poem each written by the artist. Many of
these are also written in such a way to be a work of art in their own right.
The
book opens with a number of introductions including The Wizard of Odd by Carlo
McCormick, senior editor of Paper magazine. The first image by Woodruff is a
poetic piece which invites us to clear a simple path and enter into the world
which he offers us.
The
parade begins with Anatomy Boy, a strapping young lad flayed from the shoulders
down holding a posy of flowers and chain by the hand and ends with The Grim
Reaper/Sweeper, a grim reaper dressed in a costume of metal and baubles who
sweeps away the debris of the parade with a broom topped with flowers.
These
two images bookend some thirty others images which are startling in their
originality, beauty and iconography. There is a bruised beast surrounded by
ventricles from a heart in the shape of a tree riding on a cart filled with
pearls. Monkey Does is an arresting image of a monkey basking over a fire from
which butterflies and bubbles float, while Siamese Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing
brings together the sideshow tradition of the circus with the old Biblical
tale. There is a troubadour which is a giant bug, Bambi-Lyn who have many
breasts and Flower Boy, a beautiful living embodiment of alchemical brilliance.
This
is a large oversized volume reproduced in stunning colour; each of the
characters of the parade is presented in a full page print with a description
accompanying the text. This is a visually powerful volume and is filled with
images which will haunt your dreams for a long time after seeing it.
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This review will appear in Volume 3 No. 3 of the digital and print
edition of Synergy Magazine.
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