Red Lodge Clay Center, Short-Term Resident 2016
Thomas, Assistant Professor of Art at Allegheny College, has exhibited at The David Winton Bell Gallery, Virginia Museum of Art, Fuller Craft Museum, Hunter College, Bellevue Museum, Harvard University, and the Nasher Sculpture Museum. His work has been exhibited in China, Slovakia, Dubai, Tel Aviv, and the United States. His works have been included in over a dozen publications. Additionally, he has presented lectures/workshops at over 25 institutions, including Virginia Commonwealth University, Cornell University, Queens College, and Syracuse University.
Everything can be linked together in some fashion, in either a physical, psychological, or symbolic manner.” (Buckminster Fuller)
In 1975, the year before I was born, my grandfather, an industrial arts instructor, willed me a collection of unrelated curiosities. Among these seemingly unrelated objects were tools, measuring devices, and jars full of oddities.
As a child, through play, I would create/construct identities and stories for these bizarre unrelated objects. The older I got, play shifted to questioning, and I searched these groupings for meanings, while trying to understand the disconnected relevance to myself (or, even, my life, or, who I am).
This innocent comparative analysis of visual objects to create a dialogue has been a model for my creative research. A non-linear exploration conflates past and present, while objects of commonplace import are imbued with simultaneity, coupling personal narratives and sociological observations with a symbolic mythos developed through years of refinement. Metaphoric and anthropocentric, the work sorts my declarations, my attempts at personal and social understanding, and my opinions of the self.