Vestigial Tools by Fred Birchman
In our offices for the next month or so our good friend Fred Birchman has installed his latest Vestigial Tools exhibit. They are hanging in our reception area for everyone to see.
In Fred’s own words……
I don’t remember my grandfather having a shop, but if he did he’d be at the shop table, perched on a taped up wooden stool. Under the table would be his one-eyed dog, Biscuit. Biscuit, lazily drifting, would come briefly to attention when the notion struck him that he needed to have a good lick. Left leg straight up in the air, like an antenna, signaling to the wooden radio on the table that did his barking for him. Father Coughlin mindlessly spewing his Fascist agenda between the blips and bleeps of static.
The shop would have been sweet with the smell of tobacco and cheap Canadian whisky. On the wall there would be a calendar illustrated with friendly, pink, naked girls waving to some friend who’s come to share her space on the beach. And there would be a slightly bent, metal sign advertising Moxie or Orange Nehi or 7-Up.
If there were tools, they’d be dusted across the bench. Holding awkward poses or propping up cans of bent nails and old screws. And if there were tools, they’d be like these. Cobbled together, perplexing and nonsensical. Made of wood, not of much use, slightly beat up and hanging together by a thread.
This my second batch of “vestigial” tools. The first tools were exhibited in a faux shop space at the Francine Seders Gallery in 2007. I primarily do mixed media works on paper and currently exhibit through the Prographica/KDR gallery in Pioneer Square. Prior to that I exhibited at the Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle from 1981 to 2013.
JAS remodeled our house in 1999 and I used to have a dog.
-Fred Birchman
Come visit us and take a tool home for yourself.