“The highlight of the show to me is the huge installation “The Skyline Glittered Like the Gold it Promised.” The center painting shows a Utopian cityscape with a gilded sky, the idealized Chrysler and Empire State Buildings; symbols of another glorious age, tower over our modern skyline. Two black and white paintings, Film Noir like street scenes frame this piece. On the floor and in front of the paintings are forty-two shoeshine boxes from the Great Depression. The overall impression is like an approach to Manhattan from the outer boroughs. The boxes resemble the drab buildings on the river front, the outskirts of a great metropolis. They serve as a reminder of our not too distant past where, at the end of another Gilded Age, everyone was out of work. Many people shined shoes or sold apples on the streets just trying to get by. Tom collected these boxes for years, as if waiting for the right moment for this installation.” —Excerpt from Molly Barnes
