Mildred Thompson
Encyclopedia
Mildred Thompson was an African American
artist who worked in the media of painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and photography. She was also a writer and, beginning in 1987, was an associate editor for the magazine Art Papers
in Atlanta, Georgia. Critics have related her art to West Africa
n textiles and Islamic architecture
; they have also cited German Expressionism
, music (both American jazz
and classical European music, and Thompson’s readings in astronomy
, spiritualism
and metaphysics
as important artistic influences.
. Her formal art training began in 1953 when she entered Howard University
in Washington, D.C.
There she found a mentor in James A. Porter (1905–1970), who was head of the school’s art department. He arranged for Thompson to receive a scholarship at the end of her junior year for summer study at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine
. After Thompson received the Bachelor of Arts from Howard, Porter assisted her in entering the Brooklyn Museum of Art School on a Max Beckmann
Scholarship. She began to exhibit, and her work was accepted for the Art U.S.A. ’58 exhibition in Madison Square Garden
.
During that time Thompson applied and was turned down for a Fulbright Scholarship. Feeling herself ready for study in Europe, Thompson decided to go there on her own. She worked to save money during the rest of the school year and, through the auspices of Samella Lewis
(1924–), got a summer job teaching ceramics at Florida A&M University
in Tallahassee
. In this way she earned enough for steamship passage to Europe.
was attended by good fortune. She had decided to study at the Art Academy of Hamburg
(Hochschule für bildende Künste) even though, at the time she arrived, she had not yet applied or been accepted there. Nor did she have any plans as to where she would live. A few private lessons were all she had to prepare herself for the German language. Nevertheless, armed with pluck, a strong portfolio and the help of some brand-new German friends, she found a room and was immediately accepted into the Academy. There her painting teachers were Walter Arno (1930–) and Emil Schumacher
(1912–1999). She learned etching
, lithography
and other printmaking
media from Willem Grimm (1904–1986) and Paul Wunderlich
(1927–2010). She also met at this time the printmaker Horst Janssen
(1929–1995), who introduced her to Galerie Sander in Hamburg, where Thompson had her first solo exhibition. At the end of her first year she received a scholarship, the Heemstra Stipendium, that paid for her living and school expenses.
. The social and artistic acceptance Thompson had enjoyed in Germany, however, was not to be found even in that most cosmopolitan of American cities. She soon realized that because she was a black woman, she was refused the shows and gallery representation that she felt her work deserved. In an autobiographical essay, Thompson recounted that “One woman dealer... said that it would be impossible for me to have a show in New York as an artist. [Another gallery owner said] ...that it would be better if I had a white friend to take my work around, someone to pass as Mildred Thompson.” She did, however, gain an audience with William Lieberman at the Museum of Modern Art
; two of her prints were purchased for the collection on his recommendation.
In the fall of 1961 and again in 1962 Thompson received fellowships to the MacDowell Colony
in New Hampshire
, where she worked on drawings and paintings. In 1963 she returned to Germany to live, partly because she could find no sales outlet for her work, and partly because of growing racial tension in the United States. She was not alone. Other young black artists who chose to leave the U.S. during the 1950s and 1960s include Harvey Cropper, Herbert Gentry
, Arthur Hardie, Clifford Jackson, Sam Middleton, Earl Miller, Norman Morgan, Larry Potter and Walter Williams. In the words of artist David C. Driskell
, "They chose a form of cultural exile over expatriation, hoping for a better day to come about in the land of their birth." All settled in Europe. Thompson established herself in the Rhineland
town of Düren
and once again began exhibiting and selling her work there and in the German cities of Bensberg, Aachen
, and Cologne
.
Thompson's work in the 1960s was figurative, but in the early 1970s she moved toward total abstraction. In Europe her works reflected the formal ideas of art for art's sake, and did not respond to the politicized art of the Black and Women's movements in the United States. According to writer Alexis de Veaux, "Thompson thought of herself as an expatriate and did not separate her identity as black from her identity as American..." although she eventually disavowed "...any claim to being American." Years later Thompson defended herself against the charge that because of her years spent in Europe, she was not a "Black" artist. In a 1987 essay for SAGE magazine she wrote that
After ten years in Germany (during which she traveled to southern Europe and Africa) Thompson returned to the U.S. in 1975. She found that the social climate had changed somewhat for the better, and she was able to overcome many of the obstacles she encountered. She lived at first in Florida
, where she was named Artist-in-Residence of the City of Tampa
. In 1977 she moved to Washington, D.C., where she was Artist-in-Residence at Howard University for the 1977–78 academic year. She returned to Europe in 1981, this time to Paris
, where she opened a studio in the Rue de Parme. Thompson moved to Atlanta in 1986, which was “home base” for the remainder of her life. There she taught art and art history in several area colleges, including the Atlanta College of Art
. A talented writer and interviewer, she joined the staff of the periodical Art Papers in 1987.
ian concept of the collective unconscious
. But Thompson’s feeling for music seemed to have the strongest effect on the work in the exhibition. The reviewer, Leslie Schworm, wrote that Thompson’s “…approach is to draw music or sound. She believes that patterns in music are among the purest natural recurrences, providing direct access to something basic.”
In the following year the visual description of music was still on Thompson's mind. A solo exhibition titled Concatenation at Agnes Scott College
contained a wooden sculpture titled Mass whose six parts were titled Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Gloria Dei. But other influences, including astronomy
, spiritualism
and metaphysics
were starting to appear in her work. Included in Concatenations was a series of prints titled Five Mysteries. Their abstract compositions, printed in black ink on white paper, were schematic representations of earth, atmosphere and sun, the latter a flat disc set in a sky filled with energetic marks and scratches. Thompson's series of watercolors, titled Lemurian Wanderings, were described by critic Lorena Gay-Griffin as “…the time at the dawn of the world before the first ray of sun shone through the atmosphere.” A series of colored pencil drawings, “The Phases of Cynthia”, was reported by the same writer to refer to Galileo’s study of the phases of the moon. The drawings featured “…the same sun/moon image as the prints. The circles are layered with other geometric shapes and surrounded by fragments and rays emitting from the center.” In 1990 Thompson told Essence
magazine that “My work has to do with the cosmos and how it affects us.” Such references continued in her printmaking. In 1993, as an artist-in-residence at Littleton Studios in North Carolina, Thompson created prints in vitreography
titled Helio Centric, Particles and Wave Function.
A 1992 group exhibition titled A/Cross Currents: Synthesis in African American Abstract Painting featured a catalog that cited the jazz of Eric Dolphy
, Charles Mingus
and Thelonious Monk
and the German baroque of Bach
as influences on Thomspon's art. The catalog’s essayist, Corrine Jennings, wrote that “The idea that man and certain animals can hear the sounds of eleven or twelve octaves, but can only see one octave of seven colors, has led to [Thompson’s] interest in exploring the unseen and making it visible.” The Magnetic Fields series of paintings that Thompson exhibited in the show, Jennings wrote, “…appear to visualize the force of unseen energy. They are intensely painted, tersely defined geometric structures with a direct physical application loosened by…improvisation.”
, Germany she taught art and art history at the Eschweiler Volchoch Schule from 1965 to 1974. On being named Artist-in Residence for the City of Tampa Thompson taught classes and workshops in painting, drawing, sculpture, and mural painting to adults and children at the Tampa Bay Art Center and other local venues. She also had an "open door" policy at her studio on 7th Avenue in Ybor City. There, she wrote, "...anyone who wanted to come in and see could walk in. I felt it somehow served the community." As an Artist-in-Residence at Howard University she taught etching. When she lived in Paris, Thompson gave private lessons at her studio at 4 Rue de Parme from 1981 until her return to the States in 1985. From 1986 to 1989 she taught studio classes, art history and art theory at Agnes Scott College
in Decatur, Georgia
, and in Atlanta she taught at Morehouse College
and Spelman College
. From 1986 she taught at the Atlanta College of Art
.
, Washington, DC; the Museum of Modern Art
, New York; the Brooklyn Museum
; and Howard University
, Washington, DC, among others.
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
artist who worked in the media of painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and photography. She was also a writer and, beginning in 1987, was an associate editor for the magazine Art Papers
Art papers
FileART PAPERS is a non-profit bimonthly magazine about contemporary art. Established in 1977 as the Atlanta Art Workers Coalition Ltd. Newsletter, it is the only critical arts magazine published in the Southeastern United States...
in Atlanta, Georgia. Critics have related her art to West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
n textiles and Islamic architecture
Islamic architecture
Islamic architecture encompasses a wide range of both secular and religious styles from the foundation of Islam to the present day, influencing the design and construction of buildings and structures in Islamic culture....
; they have also cited German Expressionism
German Expressionism
German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s...
, music (both American jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and classical European music, and Thompson’s readings in astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
, spiritualism
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
and metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
as important artistic influences.
Early studies
Thompson grew up in Jacksonville, FloridaJacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
. Her formal art training began in 1953 when she entered Howard University
Howard University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
There she found a mentor in James A. Porter (1905–1970), who was head of the school’s art department. He arranged for Thompson to receive a scholarship at the end of her junior year for summer study at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
. After Thompson received the Bachelor of Arts from Howard, Porter assisted her in entering the Brooklyn Museum of Art School on a Max Beckmann
Max Beckmann
Max Beckmann was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement...
Scholarship. She began to exhibit, and her work was accepted for the Art U.S.A. ’58 exhibition in Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...
.
During that time Thompson applied and was turned down for a Fulbright Scholarship. Feeling herself ready for study in Europe, Thompson decided to go there on her own. She worked to save money during the rest of the school year and, through the auspices of Samella Lewis
Samella Lewis
Samella Sanders Lewis is an African American artist , author, and former educator. Widely exhibited and collected as an artist herself, she is nevertheless perhaps even better known as a historian, critic, and collector of art, especially African-American art...
(1924–), got a summer job teaching ceramics at Florida A&M University
Florida A&M University
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, commonly known as Florida A&M or FAMU, is a historically black university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States, the state capital, and is one of eleven member institutions of the State University System of Florida...
in Tallahassee
Tallahassee, Florida
Tallahassee is the capital of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County, and is the 128th largest city in the United States. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2010, the population recorded by...
. In this way she earned enough for steamship passage to Europe.
Study in Europe
Her trip to GermanyGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
was attended by good fortune. She had decided to study at the Art Academy of Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
(Hochschule für bildende Künste) even though, at the time she arrived, she had not yet applied or been accepted there. Nor did she have any plans as to where she would live. A few private lessons were all she had to prepare herself for the German language. Nevertheless, armed with pluck, a strong portfolio and the help of some brand-new German friends, she found a room and was immediately accepted into the Academy. There her painting teachers were Walter Arno (1930–) and Emil Schumacher
Emil Schumacher
Emil Schumacher German painter, important representative of abstract expressionism in post-war Germany....
(1912–1999). She learned etching
Etching
Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...
, lithography
Lithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...
and other printmaking
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
media from Willem Grimm (1904–1986) and Paul Wunderlich
Paul Wunderlich
Paul Wunderlich was a German painter, draftsman, sculptor and graphic artist. He designed surrealism paintings and erotic sculptures. He often creates paintings referred to mythological legends.-Background:Wunderlich Gertrude was the second child of Mr and Mrs Horst and Wunderlich was born...
(1927–2010). She also met at this time the printmaker Horst Janssen
Horst Janssen
Horst Janssen was a German printmaker and draftsman.- Early life and education :He was born in Hamburg. His mother, Martha Janssen, was a dressmaker from Oldenburg; he never knew his father. Janssen was brought up in Oldenburg by his mother and grandparents in Lerchenstraße fourteen...
(1929–1995), who introduced her to Galerie Sander in Hamburg, where Thompson had her first solo exhibition. At the end of her first year she received a scholarship, the Heemstra Stipendium, that paid for her living and school expenses.
An American expatriate
After three years at the Academy, Thompson was ready to begin her professional career in the United States. In early 1961 she returned to New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The social and artistic acceptance Thompson had enjoyed in Germany, however, was not to be found even in that most cosmopolitan of American cities. She soon realized that because she was a black woman, she was refused the shows and gallery representation that she felt her work deserved. In an autobiographical essay, Thompson recounted that “One woman dealer... said that it would be impossible for me to have a show in New York as an artist. [Another gallery owner said] ...that it would be better if I had a white friend to take my work around, someone to pass as Mildred Thompson.” She did, however, gain an audience with William Lieberman at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
; two of her prints were purchased for the collection on his recommendation.
In the fall of 1961 and again in 1962 Thompson received fellowships to the MacDowell Colony
MacDowell Colony
The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...
in New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
, where she worked on drawings and paintings. In 1963 she returned to Germany to live, partly because she could find no sales outlet for her work, and partly because of growing racial tension in the United States. She was not alone. Other young black artists who chose to leave the U.S. during the 1950s and 1960s include Harvey Cropper, Herbert Gentry
Herbert Gentry
Herbert Gentry was an African American Expressionist painter lived and worked in Paris, France, , Copenhagen, Denmark , In the Swedish cities of Gothenburg , Stockholm , and Malmo , and in New York City as a permanent resident of the Hotel Chelsea.-The art of Herbert Gentry:Gentry’s...
, Arthur Hardie, Clifford Jackson, Sam Middleton, Earl Miller, Norman Morgan, Larry Potter and Walter Williams. In the words of artist David C. Driskell
David C. Driskell
David C. Driskell is a scholar in the field of African American art and an artist. Driskell is an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland, College Park....
, "They chose a form of cultural exile over expatriation, hoping for a better day to come about in the land of their birth." All settled in Europe. Thompson established herself in the Rhineland
Rhineland
Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....
town of Düren
Düren
Düren is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, capital of Düren district. It is located between Aachen and Cologne on the river Rur.-Roman era:Celts inhabited Düren's area before the Romans. They called their small settlement Durum . After the Celts other Germanic tribes settled this area...
and once again began exhibiting and selling her work there and in the German cities of Bensberg, Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
, and Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
.
Thompson's work in the 1960s was figurative, but in the early 1970s she moved toward total abstraction. In Europe her works reflected the formal ideas of art for art's sake, and did not respond to the politicized art of the Black and Women's movements in the United States. According to writer Alexis de Veaux, "Thompson thought of herself as an expatriate and did not separate her identity as black from her identity as American..." although she eventually disavowed "...any claim to being American." Years later Thompson defended herself against the charge that because of her years spent in Europe, she was not a "Black" artist. In a 1987 essay for SAGE magazine she wrote that
"On certain levels, perhaps we [black Americans] might be able to identify with certain parts of certain African cultures. To copy symbols that one does not understand, to deliberately make use of a form that one does not know how to analyze or appreciate was for me the height of prostitution. I had spent long years trying to find out who I am and what my influences were and where they came from. It was perhaps because I had lived and studied with "whitey" that I had learned to appreciate my Blackness as well as how American I truly am. My experiences throughout Africa had made my knowledge of being an American more than clear. There are recordings in our genes that remember Africa. If they are strong enough and we are free of false denials, they will surface and appear without deliberation no matter what we do."
After ten years in Germany (during which she traveled to southern Europe and Africa) Thompson returned to the U.S. in 1975. She found that the social climate had changed somewhat for the better, and she was able to overcome many of the obstacles she encountered. She lived at first in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, where she was named Artist-in-Residence of the City of Tampa
Tampa, Florida
Tampa is a city in the U.S. state of Florida. It serves as the county seat for Hillsborough County. Tampa is located on the west coast of Florida. The population of Tampa in 2010 was 335,709....
. In 1977 she moved to Washington, D.C., where she was Artist-in-Residence at Howard University for the 1977–78 academic year. She returned to Europe in 1981, this time to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where she opened a studio in the Rue de Parme. Thompson moved to Atlanta in 1986, which was “home base” for the remainder of her life. There she taught art and art history in several area colleges, including the Atlanta College of Art
Atlanta College of Art
The Atlanta College of Art , established in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1905, was the first non-profit college of visual art in the Southeastern United States....
. A talented writer and interviewer, she joined the staff of the periodical Art Papers in 1987.
Influences in Thompson’s mature work
In 1987 Thompson's show, ”In and Out of Germany” at the Goethe Institute in Atlanta, contained 42 artworks executed in Germany, France and the United States. The Atlanta newsweekly Creative Loafing mentioned that Thompson’s most recent series of colored pencil drawings, “Objective Music,” were based on Thompson's correlation of art with music. It also made reference to her sense of color and rhythmic line-making as “Kandinsky-influenced.” A contemporary review of the exhibition in Art Papers also mentioned Kandinsky as an influence for Thompson, as well as the artist’s interest in the fiction of Herman Hesse and the JungJung
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology.Jung may also refer to:* Jung * JUNG, Java Universal Network/Graph Framework-See also:...
ian concept of the collective unconscious
Collective unconscious
Collective unconscious is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is proposed to be a part of the unconscious mind, expressed in humanity and all life forms with nervous systems, and describes how the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience...
. But Thompson’s feeling for music seemed to have the strongest effect on the work in the exhibition. The reviewer, Leslie Schworm, wrote that Thompson’s “…approach is to draw music or sound. She believes that patterns in music are among the purest natural recurrences, providing direct access to something basic.”
In the following year the visual description of music was still on Thompson's mind. A solo exhibition titled Concatenation at Agnes Scott College
Agnes Scott College
Agnes Scott College is a private undergraduate college in the United States. Agnes Scott's campus lies in downtown Decatur, Georgia, nestled inside the perimeter of the bustling metro-Atlanta area....
contained a wooden sculpture titled Mass whose six parts were titled Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Gloria Dei. But other influences, including astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
, spiritualism
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
and metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
were starting to appear in her work. Included in Concatenations was a series of prints titled Five Mysteries. Their abstract compositions, printed in black ink on white paper, were schematic representations of earth, atmosphere and sun, the latter a flat disc set in a sky filled with energetic marks and scratches. Thompson's series of watercolors, titled Lemurian Wanderings, were described by critic Lorena Gay-Griffin as “…the time at the dawn of the world before the first ray of sun shone through the atmosphere.” A series of colored pencil drawings, “The Phases of Cynthia”, was reported by the same writer to refer to Galileo’s study of the phases of the moon. The drawings featured “…the same sun/moon image as the prints. The circles are layered with other geometric shapes and surrounded by fragments and rays emitting from the center.” In 1990 Thompson told Essence
Essence (magazine)
Essence is a monthly magazine for African-American women between the ages of 18 and 49. The magazine covers fashion, lifestyle and beauty with an intimate girlfriend-to-girlfriend tone.-History:...
magazine that “My work has to do with the cosmos and how it affects us.” Such references continued in her printmaking. In 1993, as an artist-in-residence at Littleton Studios in North Carolina, Thompson created prints in vitreography
Vitreography
Vitreography is a fine art printmaking technique that uses a float glass matrix instead of the traditional matrices of metal, wood or stone. A print created using the technique is called a vitreograph...
titled Helio Centric, Particles and Wave Function.
A 1992 group exhibition titled A/Cross Currents: Synthesis in African American Abstract Painting featured a catalog that cited the jazz of Eric Dolphy
Eric Dolphy
Eric Allan Dolphy was an American jazz alto saxophonist, flutist, and bass clarinetist. On a few occasions he also played the clarinet and baritone saxophone. Dolphy was one of several multi-instrumentalists to gain prominence in the 1960s...
, Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
and Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...
and the German baroque of Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
as influences on Thomspon's art. The catalog’s essayist, Corrine Jennings, wrote that “The idea that man and certain animals can hear the sounds of eleven or twelve octaves, but can only see one octave of seven colors, has led to [Thompson’s] interest in exploring the unseen and making it visible.” The Magnetic Fields series of paintings that Thompson exhibited in the show, Jennings wrote, “…appear to visualize the force of unseen energy. They are intensely painted, tersely defined geometric structures with a direct physical application loosened by…improvisation.”
Teaching
Thompson had a long and varied teaching career. From 1961 to 1964, when she was trying to make her way as an artist in New York City, she taught elementary school as an employee of the New York Board of Education. In DürenDüren
Düren is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, capital of Düren district. It is located between Aachen and Cologne on the river Rur.-Roman era:Celts inhabited Düren's area before the Romans. They called their small settlement Durum . After the Celts other Germanic tribes settled this area...
, Germany she taught art and art history at the Eschweiler Volchoch Schule from 1965 to 1974. On being named Artist-in Residence for the City of Tampa Thompson taught classes and workshops in painting, drawing, sculpture, and mural painting to adults and children at the Tampa Bay Art Center and other local venues. She also had an "open door" policy at her studio on 7th Avenue in Ybor City. There, she wrote, "...anyone who wanted to come in and see could walk in. I felt it somehow served the community." As an Artist-in-Residence at Howard University she taught etching. When she lived in Paris, Thompson gave private lessons at her studio at 4 Rue de Parme from 1981 until her return to the States in 1985. From 1986 to 1989 she taught studio classes, art history and art theory at Agnes Scott College
Agnes Scott College
Agnes Scott College is a private undergraduate college in the United States. Agnes Scott's campus lies in downtown Decatur, Georgia, nestled inside the perimeter of the bustling metro-Atlanta area....
in Decatur, Georgia
Decatur, Georgia
Decatur is a city in, and county seat of, DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. With a population of 19,335 in the 2010 census, the city is sometimes assumed to be larger since multiple zip codes in unincorporated DeKalb County bear the Decatur name...
, and in Atlanta she taught at Morehouse College
Morehouse College
Morehouse College is a private, all-male, liberal arts, historically black college located in Atlanta, Georgia. Along with Hampden-Sydney College and Wabash College, Morehouse is one of three remaining traditional men's colleges in the United States....
and Spelman College
Spelman College
Spelman College is a four-year liberal arts women's college located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The college is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman was the first historically black female...
. From 1986 she taught at the Atlanta College of Art
Atlanta College of Art
The Atlanta College of Art , established in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1905, was the first non-profit college of visual art in the Southeastern United States....
.
Public collections
Thompson’s work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art MuseumSmithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States...
, Washington, DC; the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, New York; the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
; and Howard University
Howard University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
, Washington, DC, among others.