Illinois State Museum Curators Statement

Robert Sill, Douglas Stapleton, Edward Maldanado

Co-curators Robert Sill, Douglas Stapleton and Edward Maldanado note that Thomas Skomski’s solo show “Urgent Care”, at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield “examines the processes of change and the inevitable outcome of decay and aging”. In fact Skomski’s newest work was produced during a recent health and environmental emergency with which the artist and his wife continue to struggle. The Community Word editor Clare Howard published a cover story on their circumstances here in January 2018. Skomski was also a subject of a Swedish documentary, “The New Gold”, which covered the environmental degradation caused by silica mines near their home in LaSalle County, Illinois. That and the comprehensive survey of one’s artwork, i.e. taking stock of a life and placing it in the care of a benevolent institution well suits the “Urgent Care” metaphor. His aggregate work also underscores symptomatically the remarkable, sometimes impermeable work that his oeuvre has exhibited for decades. His ability to bite off a moment of time, make immediacy and presence a part of his labor is radical and beautiful. Here is almost 50 years of radical presentness.