The animated gif is a series of digital portraits my students made as a tutorial in 2013 at Henry Ford College (née Community College), Dearborn, MI *
Andrew Thompson, aka “AndyT”, is a sculptor & installation artist, educator, curator, musician, and labor organizer. Thompson grew up in Kansas City, MO and received his BFA in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute. Thompson moved from Cowtown to Motown to receive his MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has been exhibiting his sculptures & installations throughout Southeast Michigan for two decades and has helped to curate and coordinate shows as an exhibition committee member with Detroit Artists Market, the Ann Arbor Art Center, Paint Creek Center for the Arts; as a board member of Hatch Art gallery in Hamtramck, and as a former collaborator with the Gallery Project in Ann Arbor. Recently curated exhibitions have included “Thermal Vent” as part of the Fiber Club* exhibition “Environment + Microclimates” (2024), “The Indexical Print” (2020 at the RC Gallery at University of Michigan), “Matter Out of Place” (2018 at Detroit Artists Market), and “Millennial Pink” (2017 at Ann Arbor Art Center). AndyT currently teaches full time as a Lecturer in the Stamps School of Art & Design at University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. He is a proud union member of the Lecturers’ Employee Organization (American Federation of Teachers, Michigan Local #6244).
Photo by Corrie Baldauf
My artwork is not solely about me, it is about we. I use found materials and found information produced by others as raw material to generate large scale, vivid installations that audiences and participants can engage with in personal and communal ways.
Doing the laundry, picking up the mail, or grocery shopping - my creative exploration focuses on aspects of daily life and the impact those experiences leave on my psyche. I use found materials to show how everyday interactions are transformed through the processes of memory, association, and imagination.
The found materials I use are ubiquitous, mass produced objects but they are also personal to me. The envelopes used to fill a storefront window were handled by postal workers and hand delivered to myself and people I know. The piles of clean laundry were at one time worn by my friends and family. The plastic bottles draped from the ceiling all touched my lips. The green and yellow grocery bags are from my neighborhood supermarkets of Harbortown Market and Dollar General. The installations are composed of long lasting materials that have a life cycle extending far before and far beyond the crystallized moment of the artwork.
The installations I create are a conduit for the audience to re-experience the physicality of the exhibition space and its history, and for the audience to interpret familiar materials in unfamiliar ways. I want the work to find its way into another place in the audience’s mind, as an experiential proposition for the viewer to digest and transform according to their own personal narrative. My artwork exists in a temporary state of being, an intervention in space that later exists only in memory.
The research-based and map-oriented works in my portfolio are the results of the process of de-digitalizing data from online. I interpret publicly available information through analog, low-tech means as a form of democratizing the information while repackaging it in visceral, tactile ways. The overabundance of online content with little-to-no context acts as a fog, making it difficult to differentiate the signal from the noise. I act as a curator of local information and history, selecting content to share with the audience and reframing it so that they may come to develop a new perspective on what might be shaping their community.
*Andy T digital portrait gif artists: Justin Acheampong, Reama Achour, Nomran Alhalemi, Chastity Allen, Ghada Alwazir, Mudhaffar Alyousuf, Shorooq Alzookery, Keaonna Baker, Sherry Ballard, Scott Bankey, Crystal Baskin, Sara Barackman, Marcus Beard, Terranne Brennan, Adam Brown, Krystal Buettner, John Catalano, Steven Chase, Errick Christian-Chandl, Wesley Cicotte, Latavia Clark, Kianna Collier, Camilia Cummings, Jasmine Evans, Khaila Felix, Abigail Finnerty, Tyrone Fisher, Andre Gathings, Brandon Green, Zahraa Hamade, Randi Hampton, Scott Hinson, Hisham Hussein, Hussein Issa, Holly Jakubowski, Amaarah Johnson, Lashanda Jones, Fatima Karaky, Mark Keezer, Sabrina Kren, Kelly Kulpa, Gloria Leedy, Saif Malik, Miranda Martinez, Marcus McGee, Erica Milton, Noor Moghrabi, Ibrahim Mokbel-Aljahmi, Nathaniel Monroe, Connor Murphy, Manal Nassereddine, My Nguyen, Justin Parham, Judith Rattray, Dechelle Reed, Erica Rudo, Scott Sexton, Sarah Shackleford, Ernest Sisco, Derek Sohoza, Austin Sparks, Erica Tavarez, Katherine Warden, Frank Washington, Jerett Weatherholt, Lawrence White, Marion Wiley, Desmond Williams, Lucas Wright