This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 7, 2011 - Oh, my. Looking at Tom Huck's "Brutal Truths" at the Saint Louis University Museum of Art is a bit like attending an all-you-can-eat snoot party held somewhere in the Ozarks in mid-July: crowded, intoxicating, nerve-wracking and shot through with a heady redolence of sex, sweat, meat and meth.
That Huck can capture that delirium, harness it to biting social commentary and do it in the difficult, unforgiving medium of woodcuts, is nothing short of miraculous.
On view here are several of the artist's individual, large-scale prints, alongside well known series, including the "Bloody Bucket" series, "2 Weeks in August," and the recent "Transformation of Brandy Baghead" triptych from "Booger Stew." Huck populates these massive prints with carnivalesque characters from the Ozarks and beyond, filling every inch of every print with bombastic yet finely wrought detail and tone.
Huck, who hails from Potosi, does a great deal more than mock mid-Missouri hillbillies; like the great satirical printmakers -- think Hogarth, or Goya -- he embeds a universal commentary within a specific locality. In other words, you may hope you never have to live in the strange worlds of Huck's prints, until you realize you already do.
Ivy Cooper, a professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, is the Beacon art critic.