page_title: Tom Huck
section_title: Work
hierarchical_section_title: Tom Huck / Work
caption_attribution_description: English: "Electric Baloneyland" woodcut print by Tom Huck
context_page_description: Tom Huck, also spelled Hück, is an American printmaker best known for his large-scale satirical woodcuts. He lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri, where he runs his own press, Evil Prints. He is a regular contributor to BLAB! of Fantagraphics Books. His work is influenced by Albrecht Dürer, José Guadalupe Posada, R. Crumb, and Honoré Daumier. Huck's illustrations have appeared in publications such as The Village Voice, The Riverfront Times, and the Minneapolis City Pages.
  Huck's woodcut prints are included in numerous public and private collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Library of Congress, Spencer Museum of Art, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Saint Louis Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Fogg Art Museum, Michael C. Carlos Museum, and New York Public Library. Huck has been represented by David Krut Art Projects in New York, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, Duane Reed Gallery in St. Louis, Missouri, and Eli Ridgway Gallery in San Francisco. Beginning in October 2017 Huck's gallery representation is C. G. Boerner in New York.
context_section_description: Huck is best known for creating large-scale woodcuts acting as both satirical narratives and social criticism. He says in his artist statement: "My work deals with personal observations about the experiences of living in a small town in southeast Missouri. The often Strange and Humorous occurrences, places, and people in these towns offer a never-ending source of inspiration for my prints. I call this work 'rural satire'".
  From 1995 to 2005, Huck created two woodcut folios: 2 Weeks in August: 14 Rural Absurdities and The Bloody Bucket. 2 Weeks in August: 14 Rural Absurdities, a thematically unified suite of 14 large woodcut prints, depicted 14 bizarre folk tales that allegedly occurred in Huck's hometown of Potosi, Missouri. The suite was produced in three years from 1995 to 1998. His second body of work, The Bloody Bucket, was based on violent legends surrounding a bar of that name in or around his hometown of Potosi. It comprises 10 large-scale woodcuts, executed between 1999 and 2005.
  In December 1999, Huck's work represented the United States in an exhibition entitled From Kandinsky To Corneille: Linoleum in the Art of the 20th Century held at the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen, Holland.  Featured in the exhibition was a large scale linoleum cut by Huck entitled "Attack of the 50ft. Yard Ornament".  The piece was commissioned specifically for the exhibition by the linoleum company Forbo-Krommenie in Amsterdam.
  The Whitney Museum of American Art in September 2003 featured two works by Huck in an exhibition entitled To Be Human. Both the works featured were woodcuts from the series 2 Weeks in August.
  Huck is currently working on a 14-triptych cycle of woodcut prints entitled Booger Stew. The first installment of the series, a triptych entitled "The Transformation of Brandy Baghead Pts. 1, 2, & 3", was completed in March 2009. An exhibition entitled Tom Huck and the Rebellious Tradition of Printmaking opened on August 28, 2009 at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Prints by Albrecht Dürer, William Hogarth, Jose Guadalupe Posada, and Max Beckmann were featured alongside Huck's "The Transformation of Brandy Baghead Pts. 1, 2, & 3".
  On December 19, 2011, Huck's website www.evilprints.com announced the April 1, 2012, release of The Hillbilly Kama Sutra. This new suite of 15 linoleum cut prints is Huck's first portfolio of prints since 1998's 2 Weeks in August: 14 Rural Absurdities. On April 12, 2012, a selection of prints from the new series were released in the St. Louis weekly publication The Riverfront Times.  On May 4, 2012, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, hosted the debut exhibition of The Hillbilly Kama Sutra.
  In February 2013, Huck illustrated a cover story entitled "The 10 Weirdest Members of Congress" written by Caleb Hannan. The feature article appeared in The Riverfront Times and four other Voice Media Group publications: the Houston Press, Dallas Observer, Broward-Palm Beach New Times, and Minneapolis City Pages.  All five had a cover caricature of Michele Bachmann's head on a snake, referencing the "Don't Tread On Me" motif. The story featured 9 politicians in caricature.
  In early spring of 2014 Huck completed work on his second major woodcut triptych from "Booger Stew" entitled "The Tommy Peeperz".  "The Tommy Peeperz" debuted in a show of The Outlaw Printmakers entitled "The Dirty Dozen" at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center on April 3, 2014.
  An exhibition entitled "Tom Huck: Hopeless Americana" opened on October 17, 2015 at Gallery 210 at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.  Accompanying this 20 year retrospective was a catalogue that included essays by Richard Field, emeritus curator at the Yale University Gallery of Art. The exhibition included most of Huck's major works in print from 1995 to 2015, as well as sketchbooks and a small selection of studio ephemera.
  In April 2017 the Library of Congress acquired “The Great War-Madillo”, a chiaroscuro woodcut made by Huck as a tribute to Dürer's Rhinoceros.
  On October 27, 2017 the exhibition "Booger Stew: The Monumental Triptychs of Tom Huck" 
caption: Electric Baloneyland
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