DC-area educators respond to Alma Thomas (Part I)

Posted on by

Alma Thomas taught art at Shaw Junior High School for 35 years. She said: “People always want to cite me for my color paintings, but I would much rather be remembered for helping to lay the foundation of children’s lives.” To honor and connect to Thomas’s career as a teacher, we asked DC-area educators to respond to works of art in Alma W. Thomas: Everything Is Beautiful . These educators participated in the Phillips’s 2021 Summer Teacher Institute, exploring ways to adapt arts-integrated lessons to their students. Read their perspectives on how they personally connected to Thomas’s artworks.

Read more responses in Part II

Alma W. Thomas, Cover of a birthday card, early 1960s, Watercolor on paper, Closed: 7 × 5 in., The Columbus Museum, Gift of Miss John Maurice Thomas in memory of her parents, John H. and Amelia W. Cantey Thomas and her sister Alma Woodsey Thomas, G.1994.20.141

How do you select a greeting card—by image outside or by message inside? If you are like me, I am drawn to the image first. The image strikes my eye with a message of its own.

This small watercolor illusion of a bouquet of flowers has been carefully arranged by Thomas, as if the flowers are laid out, waiting to be placed in a vase. Notice how she carefully layers her bleeding colors starting with a background of blotches of yellow, then greenish grey, and topped by red. Black streaks give structure to the blotches making the flower illusion hold.

What kind of card would you select this painting for? Birthday? Mother’s Day? Sympathy? What do you think is the written message inside? Who did Alma Thomas have in mind when she painted it? What message is she sending you?

—Mary Beth Bauernschub, School Librarian, Beltsville PK-8 Academy

 

Alma W. Thomas, Falling Leaves, Love Wind Orchestra, 1977, Acrylic on canvas, 21 1/2 x 27 1/2 in., Private collection

When leaves seem unembarrassed and stubbornly brave to show their ruby color on bright bold days, I know that nature calls us in a whisper to say, “Don’t fear your evolution. Everything must change.” So I dance with abandon as the gentle wind blows. I will not fear change. I will let it all flow. I will trust in the process, this journey, this life. I will trust in the cycles, the beauty of life.

—Colie Aziza, Early Childhood Special Educator, Pre-K, Frances Early Childhood Center

 

Alma W. Thomas, Sea of Tranquility, c. 1971, Watercolor on paper, 22 x 30 in., Alex and Lissette Stancioff

Gazing at this beautiful masterpiece of Alma Thomas reminds me of my own journey migrating from the Pearl of the Orient Seas to the Land of the Free. The challenges of migration offer opportunities for growth and resilience. Migrants have varying circumstances and make a move for different reasons, including economic, socio-political, and environmental factors. Initially, for me, it was the call to liberate myself from the hostile working environment back home, an experience that adversely affected my mental health and well-being.

Walking in the Manila Bay area in the Philippines on a sunny day, I had an epiphany. It was time to embrace change and pick up the broken pieces of my inner self. Luckily, I was offered employment in the United States, and after a few years of service, I was nominated for a countywide recognition. It’s also in this country where I found my lifetime partner, and we have been blessed with a miracle baby girl. Nowadays, I am making the time to explore what truly makes me better, greater, and happier. I knew if I did not take the risk, I would never have reached my own “Sea of Tranquility.”  Are you ready to find and explore yours?

—Irene De Leon, Service Coordinator / Early Childhood Special Educator, Judy P. Hoyer Early Childhood Center

The Phillips Collects: Kim Llerena

Posted on by

2021-22 Sherman Fairchild Fellow Shiloah Coley speaks with Inside Outside, Upside Down artist Kim Llerena, whose work Stonewall Jackson (dismantled), Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia, has been acquired by the museum.

Kim Llerena, Stonewall Jackson (dismantled), Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia, Archival pigment print, 20 x 16 in., Courtesy of the artist

“I didn’t think I had made anything meaningful this year,” chuckled Kim Llerena as she reflected on going through the process of deciding which piece to submit for Inside Outside, Upside Down.

She likes finished projects—photographs that are a part of a larger body of work or series. At the time, Stonewall Jackson (dismantled), Monument Avenue, Richmond Virginia did not fit into that category. She now views the black-and-white print of the dismantled graffiti-covered Stonewall Jackson statue in Richmond, Virginia, on Monument Avenue, as an extension of the most recent work she’s been exhibiting, American Scrapbook, which depicts fragments of the American experience across the U.S.

Like so many of the other artists I spoke with, Llerena found herself needing to change the way she typically works when it became clear last year that everything would remain on lockdown for a while with travel advisories in place. Her practice is primarily grounded in her travels on cross-country road trips. “I typically like to explore the American landscape, but as it is influenced and marked by the human hand and the human experience, that certainly was put on hold during the pandemic as I was not traveling,” said Llerena.

American Scrapbook on view at Arlington Arts Center

While setting up a show in Virginia, she decided to document the deconstructed monuments to the confederacy, where activists and protestors held demonstrations during 2020, largely in response to police brutality and the police murder of George Floyd. She hoped to capture the after effects of the protests and demonstrations on the monument. “My most recent project American Scrapbook was very interested in remnants, remnants within our visual landscape that were sort of evidence of human interaction upon the landscape whether it was rural or urban.”

Public oversight of confederate statues has been a long contested debate in Virginia, where Monument Avenue props up the legacies of the confederacy quite literally on pedestals in the former capital of the confederacy, Richmond. After the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, the law protecting the monuments came under fire. In March 2020, Virginia lawmakers finalized a bill that removed state protection for the memorials, leaving the fate of the monuments up to towns, cities, and counties.

Llerena’s work investigates our “constructed relationship to place.” Given that the monuments occupy public land, it spoke volumes to see how the public engaged in the deconstruction of the monuments. What is signified when the legacy of the confederacy is glorified so much so that the monuments become a tourist attraction? What does that say about the narratives we value in America?

The Stonewall Jackson monument was the first of four confederate statues to be removed from Monument Avenue in early July of 2020. Some have connected the removal of confederate statues across the U.S. to the student-centered Fallism movement tied to Black liberation and decolonization, which garnered attention in South Africa in 2015 as students protested the glorification of British Imperialist Cecil John Rhodes, whose statue was removed from the University of Cape Town. While the removal of a statute does not make an institution or country equitable or actively engaged in decolonization, it provides evidence that there is hope in the possibility of what collective action from the public can achieve as we consider the removal of confederate statues in the U.S. Statues and monuments signify what we value, and what stories and narratives we uplift as truth.

As Llerena drove through Monument Avenue, she took in the demonstrations going on around the monuments. The space was filled with music, protest signs, and graffiti. “Like almost repurposing that monument,” Llerena said. “So I thought that was a very beautiful moment, indicative of hopefully where we go in the future—not to glorify these confederate soldiers and these monuments, but to glorify the dismantling of them and dismantling what that signifies for how we read and teach American history.”

Kim Llerena with her work in Inside Outside, Upside Down. Photo: Travis Houze

Alma W. Thomas & David Driskell: Journeys in Art

Posted on by

Alma W. Thomas and David Driskell were an integral part of the creative and cultural scene in Washington, DC, for decades. Learn more about their journeys in art through our program with Howard University on November 13, which will focus on Spirituality, Howard University, Identity, and Thomas and Driskell’s art in dialogue.

David C. Driskell and Alma Thomas in front of a work by Thomas, likely Nursery #4, Red (1966) at Howard University. This photograph was most likely taken during the retrospective exhibition of Thomas’s work curated by James A. Porter. Courtesy of the David C. Driskell Papers at the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. Gift of Prof. and Mrs. David C. Driskell. MS01.11.01.P0124

Alma W. Thomas and David Driskell were close friends for decades. Both migrated from Georgia, settled in Washington, DC, and attended Howard University, though decades apart. Moving in similar professional and social circles, their paths often converged. In 1953, they were introduced at the Barnett Aden Gallery (the first Black-owned art gallery in the United States), located near Howard, which Thomas helped manage. The day they met, Driskell, who worked at the gallery, brought in a one of Thomas’s paintings from her car, and she tipped him for his efforts. They spoke about their backgrounds, who they knew, and their friendship began. Together, they frequented galleries and museums like The Phillips Collection, and they exhibited their work as part of the local arts scene. They kept in contact through studio visits and constant correspondence.

For Thomas’s first solo show at Howard in 1966, Driskell wrote that her art revealed “her love of life.” Five years later, Driskell curated her show at Fisk University in Nashville, where he was the chair of the art department. For Thomas: “The opening of my exhibition was . . . one I will always cherish. Such joy!” That same year, officials at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York responded to protests over the museum’s limited inclusion of African Americans by agreeing to present a series of solo shows of Black artists. During this time, Whitney curator Robert Doty corresponded with Driskell, and he recommended the Thomas to Doty, leading to Thomas’s exhibition at the Whitney in 1972 that brought her national acclaim. In 1976, Driskell featured her art in his pioneering show Two Centuries of Black American Art which debuted at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art then toured the country.

Their friendship only strengthened with time, as they updated one another on their art and plans for future visits. Driskell wrote: “I am quite anxious about seeing the new paintings that you have done . . . [S]ending warm regards and I do look forward to seeing you.” After Thomas’s passing, Driskell said “her indomitable spirit was now free to roam the order of perfection where color and form . . . reign.”

David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History is on view through January 9, 2022, and Alma W. Thomas: Everything Is Beautiful is on view through January 23, 2022.