Adam Thomas’ “Having Entered Into Their Rest” at Finch Lane Gallery. Image by Geoff Wichert

At the Springville Art Museum’s 2023 Spiritual and Religious Art of Utah exhibition, among the hundreds of excellent works that found their way into what must be one of the largest exhibitions of recent art anywhere, one piece that stood out was by an artist unknown to me. Titled “Having Entered Into Their Rest,” its two parts suggested a pair of adult-sized high chairs, though it was a challenge to see how anyone could actually sit on them. Assembled as if by accident from suggestive fragments, recognizable or not, not so much collected for the purpose as found on the fly and drafted into service, they suggested the way evolution seems to take whatever is available and press it into service to fill an unanticipated need.

“Having Entered Into Their Rest” won an Award of Merit, but its obscure title, taken from the New Testament Book of Hebrews, may have stymied viewers’ efforts, mine included, to better appreciate such perplexing furniture. The point of both the scripture and the art may be that the required labor is never done, though sometimes we have to take a break, as the biblical Creator did on that first Sabbath, accepting that once restored, we will return to the ongoing task. It’s a candid look at a creation that is, in truth, incomplete: a work in progress.

When the name Adam Thomas appeared on Finch Lane’s calendar, only moments online were necessary to learn about oddduckstudio, which in person he calls a shop, rather than a studio, wherein he also fabricates sets and props for Utah’s energetic film industry, and which on a more-or-less monthly schedule triples as a resource space for his fellow artists. Harder to connect him with, his Moonglass Gallery is both a retail artists’ outlet and an antique store, one of the nodes in the Wasatch Front network of Assemblage artists, most of whom teach nearby and haunt the shifting resale scene. The litany of galleries where he’s shown covers Ogden to BYU, but with SLC conspicuous by its absence. This month at Finch Lane is meant to be the first step in correcting that oversight, if “sight” can be used in reference to virtual invisibility.

Adam Thomas, “Four Poster Rope Bridge”

Reminiscent Reflections—Evolving Memories Over Time includes 12 works, all but one large enough and so visually magnetic that the presence in their midst of “Having Entered Into Their Rest” only became apparent when standing before it, at which point a host of clues tumbled into place. Motion picture sets and props demand tremendous creativity and resourcefulness, both of which Thomas displays on line and in the gallery. Two elements sorely lacking in today’s mainstream art are manual skill and dexterity: the abilities required to actually make ones art, which in turn feed back into the creative imagination. There can be no doubt that in his production work, Thomas hones the skills that enabled him to create, in every sense of that word, “Family Resemblance,” a 3-D mandala collaged in space from hyper-modern chairs, or “Thinking on the Topic,” a bentwood rocking chair that literally “thinks on” its own self-referential, mirror image. One structure, unfortunately not present at Finch Lane, makes the point best: “Spiral Chair-case” consists of a climbing spiral of chairs, rather than stairs, that give the cinematic effect of a stop-motion ascent. The craft necessary to realize this wonder empowers the imagination to invent it.

The individual parts of a Thomas sculpture are like the individuals who contribute their attributes to a group effort. The ladders that elevate the seats in “Having Entered” refer backward, to the “ladder back” style, and forward, to the necessary reassignment of chairs in places there are no ladders. The front legs of one are cobbled-on shovels, which invert their elevating role with a promise of stability. It’s possible to see here how identities assigned on the basis of roles are less than permanent features.

The four “Grandma Mandalas”—subtitled “Patterns and Rhythms,” “Insight,” “Namaste,” and “Reaching”—demonstrate the sheer versatility of a repeated element, such as those presumed to occur in the conversational tropes and stories Thomas recalls his Grandma Phyllis using to counsel him, and tell how that repetition often counts more than what is repeated. “No Empty Chairs / One Eternal Round” refers to another form of childhood learning: the institutionally-arranged, ever-diminishing circle of seats that is always deliberately one short, as if thereby to permanently instill that life will be a zero-sum game. Throughout, and especially in a work like the stacked chairs of “Upon Their Shoulders,” the artist strives to shift attention from presumptions to points of view: how much what is seen depends on where the viewer sits.

This talk of lessons and learning struggles to find a place in the gallery. Art requires labor, but it should also involve play … the opposite not of work, but of reality. So it is that Reminiscent Reflections climaxes with “Four Poster Rope Bridge,” in recognition of that universal engine of imagination: the place of sleep. Those who were lucky enough to have bunk beds as children will surely remember how one day they were a ship, on another a stagecoach, a fire-engine, or even an ambulance. There are rope bridges in places around the world where something more substantial is a replacement option, but for the loss of tourism their loss would entail. A loop is closed that opened with “Having Entered Into Their Rest,” with its suggestion that what we have on hand today is but a bridge to what will be tomorrow.

Trust an artist, someone like Adam Thomas, to remember and remind us that beds, like chairs, are places to dream, whether asleep or awake.

Adam Thomas, “Family Resemblance”

Adam Thomas:  Reminiscent Reflections – Evolving Memories over Time, Finch Lane Gallery, Salt Lake City, through June 7

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.