Artist Lecture: Lava Thomas

Presented by the Mills College Art Museum

This event is free and open to the public.
Registration is required.
Live stream link will be shared day of the event.

Join Mills College Art Museum for an artist lecture with Lava Thomas, the esteemed Berkeley-based, multidisciplinary artist whose practice centers visibility, healing, and empowerment in the face of erasure, trauma, and oppression. Thomas is featured in MCAM’s exhibition Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of the Paulson Fontaine Press, on view from January 22 – March 13, 2022.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Lava Thomas tackles issues of race, gender, representation and memorialization through a multidisciplinary practice that spans drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and site-specific installations. Drawing from her family’s Southern roots, current and historical socio-political events, intersectional feminism and African American protest and devotional traditions, Thomas’ practice centers ideas that amplify visibility, healing, and empowerment in the face of erasure, trauma, and oppression.

Born in Los Angeles, CA, she studied at UCLA’s School of Art Practice and received a BFA from California College of the Arts. Thomas is a recipient of the 2021 Academy of Arts and Lectures Purchase Prize, the 2020 San Francisco Artadia Award, and a 2019-2021 Lucas Artists Fellowship at Montalvo Arts Center. Thomas has participated in artist residencies at Facebook Los Angeles (2020), Headlands Center for the Arts (2018), and the Djerassi Resident Artist Program. In 2015, she received the Joan Mitchell Grant for Painters and Sculptors.

Thomas’s work is included in the National Portrait Gallery’s triennial exhibition The Outsin 2019: American Portraiture Today. Her work has been exhibited in various institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; the International Print Center, New York, NY; the Museum of the African Diaspora and the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA; and the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the United States Consulate General in Johannesburg, South Africa; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the M.H. de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; and the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

There is no singular way to address the conversation of race and representation in contemporary art. Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of Paulson Fontaine Press presents fourteen artists who capture the personal narratives and political discourses of African Americans across the country, reflecting a collective experience expressed in uniquely individual ways. This powerful exhibition of figurative and abstract artworks channels the poetics of the human experience from past and present and boldly presents ideas about history, identity, personal stories, and spiritual inspiration. The fine art prints in this exhibition were produced at Paulson Fontaine Press in Berkeley, California, an artistic hub that is known for inviting a diverse group of artists to the studio to create fine art prints. Personal to Political was organized by Carrie Lederer, Curator of Exhibitions, Bedford Gallery, Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek, CA.