The center panel is a cutaway titled Ad Oculos, Latin for It’s obvious if everyone sees it. “It’s a cutaway image of underwater. You can see the water from under like it was in an aquarium or something with a sperm-doily border. There’s bubbles everywhere but I left the water black. You still think its water because you see bubbles.” Stephanie “was the lifeguard at the pool. I was in the shallow end. I was in fourth grade and she was a senior in high school. I was underwater with my goggles on and snorkel. And while I was underwater Stephanie decided to dive off of her perch into the deep end and when she hit the water her top came down for a half second. and I saw her tits for a half second. After a half a second she pulled her top back up and I was like GULP almost drowning. That was 1983 and this was started in 2012 so how many years later is that? 29
years later i decided to spend four years making art about Stephanie Harrelson. What does that tell you? I’m working it out man.”

• Tom Hück, taken from the book “The Devil Is In The Details: Tom Hück Prints 1995-2020, Published by Fine Print Small Press 2022

Tom Huck
Electric Baloney/and (2017),
Chiaroscuro triptych woodcut, 86 x 108
inches overall. Edition of 22. Printed and
published by Flatbed Press, Austin.

For over 20 years, Tom Huck (a.k.a. Tom Hück) has been "hitting people over the head" with X-rated sociopolitical commentary that combines brash content, technical virtuosity and layered references to the history of prints. His elaborate compositions roil with bawdy images of sex, gluttony and violence, delivered in intricately carved woodcuts of monumental scale that reference his art historical heroes: printmakers from Master ES to Max Beckmann. His "fan­boy worship" of Albrecht Dürer began at age 14 when he saw the· fun woodcut cycle of Dürer's Apocalypse (1498) at the Uffizi gallery with his grandparents. Huck’s images begin with numerous sketches and art-historical research that coalesce into a cartoon that he cuts using traditional Japanese wood gouges. His matrices can take up to a year and half to complete.

Huck has shown with galleries in New York, San Francisco and Kansas City and his work is held in many public collections. This past fall marked his debut with Old Master dealer C.G. Boerner, where his work is complemented by the artists. he reveres. "Booger Stew: The Monumental Triptychs of Tom Huck (1-III)" included three out of a planned cycle of 14 oversized triptychs. Electric Baloneyland, at approximately seven by nine feet, is the largest and most recent (also on view were The Tommy Peepers (2014) and The Transformation of Brandy Baghead Pts. 1, 2, & 3 (2009), somewhat smaller in scale.)

Though most of his prints are produced and published by his workshop, Evil Prints, in St. Louis, Huck has also done projects with Landfall Press and Lawrence Lithography; he worked with Flatbed Press on Electric Baloneyland because, he explains, his ideas "have out­grown my personal resources."

Born and educated in the St. Louis area, he has made Midwesterners both the primary audience for and the central characters in his barbed satires of the devolving morality of Heartland culture. Electric Baloneyland presents a twisted amalgam of "fat, angry, boozed, drugged, racist, bigoted and willfully ignorant Americans having a good time at an American tradition: the county fair.” The center panel, subtitled Fish Hookin’–Here Comes Mr. Fishy, depicts an over­weight middle-aged man in underpants, leather boots and a helmet nabbing an unwitting "star-spangled mermaid" (Huck's version of Lady Liberty) with his bare hands. The Left panel, inspired by Daumier's Gargantua (1831); features Uncle Sam, shooting himself in the head and disgorging a hellish rollercoaster on which KKK-hooded figures ride pig-cars. On the right, masked young men engage in a shooting game titled Shoot' 'Em Up: Hedz of State with various historical and contemporary political figures as their targets. Huck recalls "being able to win REAL weaponry at a fair in the early eighties… Looking back on this, it's apparent to me that this [was] an early symptom of an overall illness, especially in rural America:" –Sarah Kirk Hanley – ART IN PRINT, January 11, 2018

*Dimensions shown in listing represent the rolled artwork for shipping.

In 2005 Tom Hück was burning hours on the couch with his then pregnant wife watching reality TV, "Because that's what you do, you sit around and watch a lot of TV." "I have a sick hatred… a love/hate, I guess, relationship with reality television. I love watching the train wreck." Tom found inspiration in what many consider to be the worst reality TV show of all time. A show so bad that journalist Robert Bianco called it "hurtful and repellent even by reality's constantly plummeting standards."
The Swan only lasted eighteen episodes and was a modern duckling to a swan trope. "They took the worst looking candidates and they gave them massive amounts of plastic surgery and in a 24 hour period you put them all in one beauty pageant. At the end they all look like the same Jenna Jamison style looking porn star. Oh my god this is the worst thing I have ever seen" The destructive nature of the human freak show and the self-abuse of reality TV share an emotional kin with the darkest aspects of Medieval Art so Tom's reaction was, "I'm watchin' this, I'm like, I'm gonna fuckin' do something about this shit."

Taken from the book "The Devil In The Details" by Greg Kessler, Fine Print Small Press 2022

This artwork is sold only as part of the complete set of The Four Seasons and is included as a bonus woodcut

This artwork is framed and sold in a set
Framed Dimensions:
22.75 h x 23.75 w (Ball of Hate)
20 h x 17 w (Rumble Thumpin)
20 h x 17 w (Bag-O-Hedz)