The Modbo presents August’s First Friday: “Floyd D. Tunson: Works on Paper.”  The opening reception is from 5:00 pm until midnight on Friday, August 2nd, with live music by My Name is Harriett at 7 and 9 pm.  The show runs through Friday, August 30th. In addition to the opening reception, the gallery is open on Friday evenings from 4-7 pm or by appointment.  The Modbo is located in the Arts Alley in downtown Colorado Springs at 17C E. Bijou. Find the stretch of Bijou that is between Cascade and Tejon, and go south down the alley. Street parking is available, but The Modbo recommends the lot on Cascade just north of Bijou, which is only $1 after 3 pm. The Modbo can be reached at themodbo@gmail.com, themodbo.com, or 633-4240. Of all the traditional tools and evolving technologies available to an artist, there’s only one that Floyd D. Tunson cannot do without: “Just give me a pencil,” he says, “because drawing is the basis of everything I do.”  For the work in this show, that “pencil” is a Uni-ball pen. And what sounds simple is simply not. The process is tricky, given the tension between control and inhibition – a sort of Hamlet dilemma, in which “thinking too precisely on th’ event,” can result in “one part wisdom and ever three parts coward.” Since a direct ink-drawn image on paper can’t be cleaned up the way a pencil drawing or a painted canvas can, the strokes have to be thoughtful, but freedom for happy coincidence has to be allowed. This dialectic is evident in the totality of the work, where certain drawings seem more tightly controlled than others, although each piece relies on the tension. A close viewing of each is a chance to follow the artist’s hand – the hesitations, the exuberance, the energy. In the Kabuki Knot series, the composition is architectural, but creating it is a completely intuitive process. When Tunson sets pen to paper, he allows an innate sense of design to automatically compose a continuous image. In the Monsters series, the details are...