Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Thompson.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I didn’t decide to become an artist until I was nearly thirty. I was living in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts and working for VISTA (the domestic Peace Corps) and helping renovate an empty storefront into a Community Arts Center. Near the end of the job my supervisor asked if I would be interested in teaching a class when the Center opened. “A class”, I asked, “a class in what”? He suggested a class in collage but I told him I had no idea what collage was. He explained the concept and I went home and made what I consider to be one of my favorite collages. I taught the class, fell in love with art and decided to move to Chicago to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Within a year I had matriculated into school and spent two years immersed in a variety of subjects. I found myself concentrating on printmaking and decided it made more sense to buy myself an etching press rather than rent one by the semester and consequently dropped out, bought a press and have used to this day.
While still a student, the school hosted a kite-flying contest with the prize being a case of beer. Determined to win I build a large 6′ in diameter kite that I was certain would assure me success. Sadly the day of the competition dawned still and windless and my kite never left the ground, but I realized that I enjoyed making kites. I soon had a show of them in the lobby of the Goodman Theatre and then I was commissioned to create a 100′ segmented kite from hang in the atrium of The Marshall Field’s store on State Street and a career was born.
Please tell us about your art.
I work in a number of mediums besides the kites including fake postage stamps, mono-prints, sculpture, painting, assemblage, paper-mache, mosaic and lights. The fake postage stamps are created in the computer, ink-jet printed and perforated on my 1886 single-stroke perforator. I affix them to addressed envelopes and drop them into the mail in the hope that they are cancelled and delivered. Part Fluxus exercise, part desktop philately and part political action, the stamps are satirical works. Inversions of traditional stamps, they tread a path between homage and irony, lampoon politicians, highlight corruption and censorship, target social foibles, spoof cultural myopia and mock religion. Hiding in plain sight the stamps have been successfully mailed from dozens of countries bearing the miniature messages not easily confused with the usual postal pabulum. Yes, they are illegal (each one constitutes a federal felony), but I have sent thousands through the mail, both domestically and internationally. And they have caused me some legal trouble, I have been threatened with arrest by US Postal Inspectors who visited my studio bearing a cease and desist order. I have been detained by State Security agents in China and then deported after mailing fake Chinese stamps from China for half a dozen years.
I filed a Freedom of Information Request to acquire a copy of my file from the Postal Service. After a year of obfuscation my file was finally delivered, over 150 pages, including surveillance reports on lectures that I had given, summaries of surreptitious conversations between me and undercover agents at openings and even a report from an alleged informer amongst my friends. It included black and white photographs of a few confiscated letters. I knew that many more letters had been confiscated and I eventually sued the US Postal Service to secure color images of all the letters they had intercepted: Michael Thompson VS The United States Postal Service. I won. They were forced to give color images of all those envelopes, but kept the originals for any eventual prosecution.
Humor, politics, popular culture, current events and history all inform my work. Little did I know that these tiny bits of perforated paper would come to represent the subversion of Governments, bring me into conflict with State and Federal Statutes, induce Postal Inspectors to pose as patrons at my art openings, get me deported, interrogated and threatened with arrest. My intent is to explore the bounds of expression, challenge and expand those boundaries and transform the world into an arena of artistic activity.
As an artist, how do you define success and what quality or characteristic do you feel is essential to success as an artist?
I define success as satisfaction with the work one is doing, renumeration and the growth of one’s embrace of the craft and of creativity. The ability to pursue new avenues of expression seems fundamental for growth as an artist. Being an artist is just a lot of work.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
My kites are sold at Pagoda Red, located at 400 N Morgan in Chicago and 911 Green Bay Road in Winnetka, IL.
I presently have a selection of kites on display at the Bucktown/Wicker Park Library, 1701 N Milwaukee Ave.
My website is www.michaelthompsonart.com and I am always happy to have people make an appointment to visit me at my studio in E Garfield Park.
Contact Info:
- Address: 319 N Albany Ave
- Website: www.michaelthompsonart.com
- Phone: 773-533-0506
- Email: mft@att.net
- Facebook: michaelthompsonart
Image Credit:
Michael Thompson
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