Hometown Boy | Westword
Atomic Elroy (aka Tom McElroy), a fixture in the Colorado Springs art community, isnt an easy person to explain. A one-man artistic mover and shaker, he puts you in mind of a Phil Bender, but...a Phil Bender in Colorado Springs, home of Focus on the Family, NORAD, Fort Carson, the Air Force Academy and Peterson Air Force Base, just to name a few bastions of Colorado conservatism. But as McElroy puts it, Atomic Elroy is a self-proclaimed lone voice in the forest, and hes comfortable with that. Its like Im the one whos constantly reinventing the wheel. Ive got the feeling like somebodys got to do it. We cant just let all those religious nuts rule the roost.
The quirky video, installation and performance artist will get a chance to explain the role of the lone voice  with a sprinkling of self-mocking humor  when the exhibit Atomic Elroy's Hometown (his first solo in a major venue) opens with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. tonight at FAC Modern, 121 South Tejon Street in Colorado Springs. Its been helpful for me in terms of dealing with the issues that go with being like an artistic salmon floating up the stream in Colorado Springs, he says of the show, which includes everything Elroy, from one deliberately poorly executed Michael Garman Magic Town constructed out of black Fome-Cor and crudely drawn on with chalk to an eight-by-eight cube housing a video monitor: Its just me talking about being stuck in this black-box tomb Ive created for myself, how Im trapped in a prison I make.
Remember to bring your grain of salt.
Hometown remains on view through March 28; go to www.csfineartscenter.org/exhibitions.asp or call 1-719-634-5581 for more details.
Jan. 31-March 28, 2009