Tom Huck: Two Weeks in August and The Bloody Bucket

Tom Huck lives and works in St. Louis, MO where teaches printmaking at Washington University and runs his own press, Evil Prints.

“My work deals with personal observations about the experiences of living in a small town in Southeast Missouri. The often strange and humorous occurrences, places, and people in these towns offer a never ending source of inspiration for my prints. My chosen media is printmaking, specifically the woodcut. The combination of dark humor with the inherently expressive medium of the woodcut heightens the complexity of my images.”

In 2005 the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art received the suite of prints Two Weeks in August: Fourteen Rural Absurdities as a gift from Don and Joyce Omer.

“It was only natural that I create work about my hometown of Potosi, Missouri. That place is loaded with bizarre tales and local folklore, as most small towns are. Each image in 2 Weeks in August:14 Rural Absurdities depicts a single day’s bizarre but TRUE occurrence over a two week span. ALL OF THE STORIES ARE TRUE AND THE PEOPLE ARE REAL. None of the names have been changed to protect privacy!! I started carving the first block in 1995 and finished in 1998.”

In 2006, Dr. Harold F. Daum purchased the Bloody Bucket Series and donated them to the permanent collection.

“Begun in 2000, The Bloody Bucket is a cycle of 10 woodcuts, based on a bar of the same name, that existed Potosi, Missouri from 1948-1951. Each image is based on tales that I heard growing up. The “Bucket” was a place of good times as well as bad, where violence played an important part of a full weekend of entertainment. Most of these acts were perpetrated by WWII vets returning home, where they continued their violent ways.”