School of the Art Institute of Chicago Professor Emeritus, Tom Jaremba died on August 31, 2008. He was my friend and my graduate adviser at SAIC (when I was a student there from 1981-83). Tom was a teacher to nearly all of us who were active in Chicago’s small but thriving performance art community in the 1980s. In 1986 I worked with Tom on his adaptation of Orphee, by Jean Cocteau, performed at Lodge Hall in Wicker Park and the State of Illinois Center [now the James R. Thompson Center]. My friend, fellow student, and performance artist, Brendan de Vallance has attempted to archive this period and the participants in the community.
Lisa Wainwright, Acting Dean of Faculty at SAIC, wrote:
“Those of you who knew Tom remember a tall and ebullient man who was inquisitive and generous with all students and all of us. He gave much to this institution coming to us from the Goodman Theater and founding the Design and Communications Department with [the late] John Kurtich in the late 60s and then the Performance Department a few years later. His commitment to the body as an instrument of expression in art impacted generations of artists and still holds a critical place in the aesthetic mandate for performance art at the School.”
The Chicago Tribune obituary about Tom is linked below…
Performance art teacher, devotee
By Trevor Jensen
Chicago Tribune reporter
September 5 2008
“Thomas A. Jaremba helped start a department to teach performance art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and staged his own wildly eclectic shows that mixed dance, dialogue, video and music.”
The complete article can be viewed on the Chicago Tribune website:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/southsouthwest/chi-hed-jaremba-05-sep05,0,7132232.story
I was Tom’s student (and flat-mate) 1969-1971. I was an older student, an army vet, and totally enamored of Tom, his movement technique, the nascent performance art scene, and the swirl of expression at the AI and Tom’s Webster (was it Ave?) apartment and loft. Formative years for me, and though we eventually fell out of touch, Tom was a major influence on my life, world view, and work. He was a nut case, but he was a real teacher.
Thanks so much for your note, Richard. I imagine those years were an especially exciting, intense time, utterly terrifying at other times. When I met Tom in ’81 it happened when there was an exciting confluence of students. I wasn’t happy as a student much of the time. The sole source of relief came from the community that my fellow performance students made under Tom’s influence and mentoring.
Tom was my teacher, mentor and friend. I owe so much to his teachings, in fact I can honestly say, he helped form the person I am today. He was supportive of my performance work right up to the end of his wonderfully inspiration life. He encouraged me to dance, to use my body as an expressive tool. This led me to more in-depth explorations of dance styles and forms that eventually lead me to studying Asian dance forms, specifically Sri Lankan Kandyan dance. He was my dramturge, asking for his advice over the 35 odd years I have know and worked with him.I miss him greatly and will be forever grateful for his honesty and overview of culture.
Dear Ellen,
Thank you so much for your comment, for coming to Tom’s memorial last week, and for being my teacher. I too was deeply by Tom’s intense physicality and deep psychic connection to that real yet intangible energy within us.
I was really happy to see you again after all these years. Your solo dance—dedicated to and performed in the manner of Tom’s own dancing—had a powerful effect on me. I’m sure it did on everyone else that evening, particularly for those of us who had performed and studied with Tom. Your performance with Meredith Monk was equally inspiring.
When I was Tom’s student, it was your example and your work that amplified what I learned from him. You helped me to discover performance: what was then a radically different art form and a radically different state of being from what I was as a painter, musician, and fledging media artist. I took your movement workshop in Tom’s Lodge Hall studio back in the summer of 1981. I can remember doing RAF calistenics and a lot of other physically demanding exercises in that June or July heat. Werner was there, and so were Andy Soma and Susan Wexler…hard to remember who else. I wish I could remember the title of the performance you did around that time. You used a large TV set as an icon and as elevated base to dance to a song from the Human League’s first album. What was the title of your piece and the title of that song?
Like you, Tom’s influence formed what I am as a person, not only as an artist. Using my body as a medium of expression was an exciting, difficult, and oftentimes scary challenge. I’m happy to say the risks paid off. Working through fear, not copping out…all that, along with the heightened sensitivity to what and how my physical self was, and is, enriched me as an artist and person. Thanks to Tom and again, thanks to you.
I’m just now discovering this thread about Tom and finding out more about him.
I knew him in the late ’70s and early ’80s when I took his class at SAIC.
He was always very encouraging and I got to know him a bit outside of school.
Tom Jaremba touched a lot of people’s lives and was a real and important mentor to many – myself included.
Thank you for creating this forum to remember him.