On May 1, 2023, Chicago lost one of its great artists: Thomas Kong. We had the pleasure of working with Thomas a little in 2017 when we published the booklet At Work with Thomas Kong by Dan Miller, with illustrations by Ruby T. Thomas Kong’s collaborator Dan Miller recently wrote this reflection:
Thomas Kong died in the early hours of May 1st, 2023. The news was not a surprise, but a part of me is incredulous he won’t be making collages at Kim’s Corner Food every day until the end of time. The constancy of his life and work was one of the things that made Thomas a special figure. You always knew you could stop by any day to chat, buy a snack, and marvel at his singular practice. To be in the store with him was to witness not so much a daily grind as a daily shimmy; a restless dance of the eyes, hands and heart.
I met Thomas in 2014, soon after moving to Chicago. He was charismatic, compelling, and curious. There was something magical about the way we became friends: we were mutually opportunistic, with total sincerity. Thomas changed completely the way I saw art, and I opened a door to a community he only sensed might exist. When I took up his idea that we should “start a gallery”, we became co-conspirators in a deliberately experimental project. The Back Room, which operated from 2015-19, became a little solar system in Rogers Park. If you got close, it was hard to resist falling into Thomas’s orbit. And he relished it. The movement of so many genuine and playful artists in and out of the store changed his life profoundly in its later years.
Thomas was irrepressible, funny, and generous. He would often shove dollar bills, or candy, into my pocket as I was leaving the store. He had a great big puckish smile, and an infectious almost-childlike energy. But he could also be stubborn and elusive. Anyone who met him knows he lived by the commandment ‘Be Happy’, a phrase that appears thousands of times over in his work. I suspect this was as much an instruction for himself as it was for his audience. Whatever its motivation, it worked on me, and I know it worked on many of you.
Kim’s Corner Food was one of the more incredible and immersive art experiences one could have in Chicago. The store was so densely packed with Thomas Kong’s collages that the products frequently blended into the art and vice versa. Because the store had bodega hours and not gallery hours, you could visit at all sorts of odd times and find yourself inside this world of color and form with Thomas at the center of that paper storm, joyfully cutting and gluing behind the counter next to the register, or laying things out on the surface of a freezer case. A broken fridge for pop cans was no big loss—the glass doors could simply be used to display more collages.
The booklet we made with Dan was a production. It was a mix of digital and RISO printing that we took to the bindery and once collated and bound, we had to mount business cards Dan designed with Thomas inside two little stick-on plastic sleeves that went on the inside front and back covers. After that, Thomas Kong was handed the print run and he stuck “Be Happy” stickers inside nearly every booklet. Most of the booklets had three of those stickers adhered inside—frequently in very non-obvious locations where they would have less presence than we imagined. Thomas was a real chain smoker (inside his shop, no less) so the booklets came with a free second-hand smoke scent as well. The booklet has been out of print for a few years, but we are happy to finally offer a free PDF download of the digital version for you to read.
- Marc & Brett