The Reading Room
I am a storyteller, a recycler of memory and everyday acts – Barbara Earl Thomas
After a six year break from the gallery world Barbara Earl Thomas is letting us see her work again.
Why such a long hiatus? Thomas was all in at the Northwest African American Museum, spending most of the six years as Executive Director. The commitment to the museum, which she also help found, limited her energies but now, with the museum years behind her, she’s back.
And how lucky for us that her first exhibited work is a series of linocuts titled, The Reading Room.
- Visitation Announced
Of the series Thomas says:
I am one of those readers who seriously enters the world of the word. I love how language can shape a vision, create a picture. In the reading room series I really wanted to describe simultaneous actions, past, present and future that were happening all in the same place by virtue of the book. It’s not unusual to make images of the things you want to document, keep and possess. In my images the books open, things jump off the page and run around in the room. We see and experience history recreated over and over–You see lots of guns shooting, characters falling, houses flooding and unfortunately or not life going on. It’s all in the books.
Calamity Heralded
Dilemma Pierced
Thomas, a Seattle native who studied under Jacob Lawrence, was hailed as a “painter and writer of prodigious talent and remarkable visionary sensibility,” by the University of Washington Press, who published the first monograph of her work Storm Watch: The Art of Barbara Earl Thomas in 2008.
Each print in the Reading Room series series is 15 x 20 inches and are available for $1500 each. For a closer look please click on the desired print above and enjoy the roll over zoom.