In recent gifts to the collection, the OJAC has been quite fortunate to receive two unique “cloud” works by Austin-based artist Brad Tucker. The first, titled Exposed Midriff, is a gift from Jaime and C. Sean Horton. The work is constructed of chocolate brown fabric stretched over an exposed cloud-shaped plywood frame. The second is a work on paper that includes a cluster of overlapping cloud rings on a cyan blue background. This work, titled Clouds, was received from The Carter/Wynne Family Collection, and also exhibited in the OJAC’s Paper Chase exhibition last summer.

 

I’ve always been a fan of Brad Tucker’s cloud works and was curious to learn about the origin of this recurring motif, so I asked the artist to share his thoughts. Tucker says he began making the cloud-shaped works shortly after he graduated from UNT in 1991. At the time, working at a sign shop in Irving, Texas, his job was bending strips of metal and tin into channel letters that would house neon lit, Plexiglas faces. To make curves, thin metal strips were wrapped around steel pipes; to make angles, he used a sheet-metal break. It was tedious work, but Tucker says there actually was a connection between the work he was doing at the sign shop and the shaped-canvas, object paintings he’d been making at UNT. One day, Tucker took an odd strip and repeated the pattern: curve-angle-curve-angle, and so on. When he joined the ends of the strip, the result was a cloud-shaped aluminum loop.

 

Happy with the results, Tucker then began transferring that shape to similarly formed painting supports. “Even though I employed self-determined rules for drawing the clouds (the humps all had to have the same paint can radius), they always came out looking like they didn’t take themselves too seriously.” Tucker says initially he was put off by descriptors such as “cartoon-like,” but has come to appreciate the term; and recognizes that the combination of sophistication and goofiness are what gives the work lasting appeal.

 

Over his career, the artist continues to return to the cloud motif to explore new facets of the form. He enjoys the fact that their rounded edges lend themselves to nontraditional hangings. The shapes foster unexpected modes of presentation as individual clouds give way to cluster groupings which then lead to new narratives.

Exposed Midriff, 2000. BRAD TUCKER. Fabric, latex paint, plywood. 21 x 23 x 1 in. Gift of Jaime and C. Sean Horton. 2022.007

Clouds, 2020. BRAD TUCKER. Graphite, watercolor, and cyanotype on paper. 16 x 13 x 1 in. Gift of the Carter/Wynne Family. 2022.010

Amy Kelly

Registrar