September 7 - November 1, 2019

Periphery Space at Paper Nautilus presents an installation by Thomas Lail.

“Three Wallpapers” unfurls three silkscreened rolls of wallpaper down the stairwell of Paper Nautilus. Counterweighted with bundles of suspended books Lail’s printed images reference the patterns of Utopian designer/writer William Morris and found images of protesting crowds. Bookended by degraded overprinted images of Morris’s Marigold pattern - itself a reference to the beauty of the common and ordinary - and with the central panel repeating an appropriated image of gathered protestors, Lail’s wallpapers locate us between the Utopian strivings of the past and the muddled conflict of the present.

Biography

Thomas Lail exhibits in the United States and internationally and is represented by One Mile Gallery. Since 1993, Lail has taught drawing and painting at Hudson Valley Community College, SUNY in Troy, NY where he is Professor of Fine Arts and a recipient of both the President's Award and the State University of New York Chancellor's Award. He is a past recipient of numerous New York State Foundation for the Arts Special Opportunity Stipend awards as well as a Fulbright-Hays award from the United States Department of State. A native of Upstate New York, Lail grew up across the street from a geodesic dome- perhaps foreshadowing his current interest in Utopian dreams. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Lail was involved in the Greenpoint/Williamsburg Brooklyn art scene. ThomasLail now lives and works in a bricolage former-tractor barn on what was once Heald Orchards in Kinderhook, NY with artist Tara Fracalossi and their son, Coltrane.

To see more of the artists work go to his website