Dominoes is a game about continuity and similarity as Tom McMillan demonstrates on a makeshift coffee table in his fourth floor West room, shuffling tiles and rearranging their configuration. But these dominoes are slightly different.
His own concept and creation, the set of tiles is glazed porcelain, adorned with silk-screened images that display evocative depictions of black Americans with high-profile and continually changing characters such as Condoleezza Rice, Bill Cosby and Johnny Cochran.
This domino set is the most recent work for the artist and his most socially significant project yet. The South Carolina-born sophomore wanted to represent figures within the black and white American social paradigm whose personas were, as he termed, difficult "to pin down."
Likewise, McMillan himself is somewhat difficult to pin down. When asked about defining moments in his artistic career, he'd rather recall his experience watching the Sox in Game 3 of the last ALCS instead. When asked about his high school, his answer is muddled by the fact that he has attended both public and private. And when questioned about his hometown, again he must explain that he has roughly two of them.
A part of the Museum of Fine Arts School five-year, dual-degree program with Tufts, the one-time painter has begun to explore other forms of art, from his foray into clay to his enrollment in the Ex College's "Making Movies" class.
The 20-year-old McMillan has only recently made the jump from what he described as "male-dominated abstract expressionism in which the artist is the mouthpiece for a universal experience."
McMillan felt that, as a teen trying to tackle such a "cerebral" art form, his work lacked authenticity at such a young age. "I was 15! I wondered whether it was legitimate that I was a 'mouthpiece for a universal experience,'" McMillan said. Regarding his aspirations for the future, McMillan, like any other college student, jokes that he would be better able to comment on the subject "10 years from now."
McMillan is similar to any other Tufts student. His walls are covered with posters of "The Simpsons," rapper Fabolous, and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." He sports a "Big Papi" T-shirt and fashionably thick black glasses. And he could even be said to have settled on Tufts as his "safety school" - though in his case, any university would have fit that description.
"Art is not for the faint of heart," McMillan said, "which makes artists doubt themselves. You're never sure whether you're good enough."
McMillan, who is pursuing an English major as well, is only half-joking when he remarks that he's attending Tufts as a back-up. He's considered journalism, which is something of a tradition in his family. The son of two journalists, he has been deeply affected by the work of his father who died when he was just three years old. George McMillan, a civil rights reporter in the 1940's, was active in the movement, taking part in the Million Man March on Washington in 1963.
With both Southern and Northern roots, McMillan and his mother live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in a plantation house in St. Helena, South Carolina, which he visits during vacations. His experience growing up in such a historically significant area of Reconstruction Era America has brought race issues to his attention.
Though some may question McMillan's choice of subject for the dominoes, he is confident in his work. "It's something that is part of my life, living in that area. It's not like race in America is just a black issue," he said. "It's not like it's their responsibility to fix. It's everyone's responsibility."
McMillan is aware that his dominoes make a strong statement. "They're overtly social, and more pop-arty, and I like that," McMillan explained. "It's not about the museum. It doesn't need the museum."
Though he's created approximately seven paintings, most of which are roughly three feet by five feet, McMillan is looking forward to learning new mediums. "Every art has a language," he says, "and you have to learn that language to say something important within it."
