It is always a gift to be introduced to an artist whose work inspires the soul and uplifts the spirit. I’ve never met the Seattle-based Barbara Earl Thomas in person — whose art-making career spans more than 40 years. However, I am happy to be introduced to her work through the solo exhibit, Barbara Earl Thomas: The Illuminated Body, currently on view at the University of Pennsylvania’s Arthur Ross Gallery through May 21. Per the gallery, “she builds tension-filled narratives through papercuts and prints, placing silhouetted figures in social and political landscapes. She pulls from mythology and history to create a contemporary visual narrative that challenges the stories we tell as Americans about who we are.”
Her large-scale cut-paper works celebrate Black cultural figures, among them August Wilson, Seth Parker Woods and Charles Johnson. Thomas encourages extended viewing of her vibrant portraits, notably those in The Transformation Room, a luminous installation created from light and intricately cut Tyvek that offers a place for reflection.
Her deeply philosophical and emotionally forceful images leverage the power of light and dark, framing shards of color. Here, I ask her to reflect on The Illuminated Body and the power of her work to trigger creative revelations.
Cut paper is a venerable craft. What caused you to adopt this medium?
My first close-up experience of large-scale paper cuts came in 2013 through Karen Bit Vejle’s exhibition at The Nordic Heritage Museum here in Seattle. As a printmaker, I was intrigued by the clean lines and graphic boldness of her folkloric cut images, but most of all I was captivated by the possibility of producing my imagery in large scale. My first attempts in 2015 were lanterns with my cut imagery that wrapped around the four sides. Next, I experimented with and ultimately adopted the use of Tyvek, an industrial construction material used as a moisture barrier; it is a durable, translucent paper like archival material. Using an Xacto knife like a pencil, I cut large compositions that I simply attached to the wall with pins. It was a way to free myself from my delicate and painstakingly detailed paintings and prints. For my two-dimensional portraits, I use hand-printed color for the background “illumination” and cut my imagery from black rag stock. The black silhouette feeds my graphic impulse. In the immersive installations, I gave myself over to creating larger-than-life-sized spaces where my viewers could step inside my world of light and shadow, completely fashioned by hand. It was a perfect outlet for my obsessive need to work to the edge of my endurance while willing the material to become something.
The lighting gives these an ecclesiastical stained glass feeling. Was your intention to create secular yet spiritual images and environments?
I’m drawn to the grandeur of cathedrals, temples and the majesty of ceremony, as well as the symbolic gestures that are created to overwhelm and center the human experience as part of something larger. I understand this, and I use the idea of the ecclesiastical or spiritual space as a reference, not a destination. I reference what happens when human hand works in the service of the soul’s obsession to conjure and push itself to design a space of wonder that disarms.
With each new exhibition, I have an opportunity to rethink how the installation can be configured to adapt, enhance and utilize the architectural bones of the location. In the case of the Arthur Ross Gallery, I am provided with a space that is already beautiful without my efforts. My challenge was to lean into the beauty and, in doing so, I created a new 16-foot panel that incorporated my response to the gallery’s Venetian Gothic architecture and its distinctive ornamentation. I honored the space through acknowledgement of its specificity, then made it my own by reimaging the double windows, to which I added these words: Entangled, divided, we fall, to merge into the divine mystery.
What do you anticipate the viewer will experience from your work?
When my viewers step across the threshold, I hope they will see, feel and experience the dazzle of the light and shadows as the imagery of a million cuts flicker through the history of the place, filtered by the light of their own experiences, in a shared space where we are all invited to wonder.
What do you hope will be imparted—appreciation of your craft, or message?
I come from a long line of makers. My mother crocheted, embroidered and sewed just about everything in our house. When I embroidered, she’d walk over, take my work, flip it over, look at the back side to ensure that it was as beautiful as the front. At that point I knew nothing of fine art, but I understood that part of the beauty was the passion for craft, embedded in the making. I find they are inseparable. I want my viewers to be held not only in the beauty but feel, in the multiple cuts, the energy of the making. I want the work to inspire wonder, not just by what I’ve made, but because it can reveal the viewers ability to see, feel and experience, of which they are a part, as my gift to them.
Is this exhibition an extension of your previous work, or is it a new turn for you?
The work in The Illuminated Body contains nine individual two-dimensional figurative works, three glass story vessels with sandblasted images, and the The Transformation Room, a large-scale immersive installation. All formats are about creating form through light and shadow, and each is an extension of work I have done over the past 10 years. With each new show it’s an evolution. I’m drawn to the interplay between what is narrative iconography and what are abstract forms.
