Currently Showing in the Bobick Gallery

CYNTHIA THOMPSON:
FORLORN
January 12- February 9, 2012
Artist Talk: Feb 9  3:30pm room 203 (new time)
Closing Reception:  Feb 9, 4:30pm

Memphis-based artist Cynthia Thompson’s work uses the body as the site of personal investigation. Thompson explores the physical manifestations of denial, shame, and oppression by examining issues surrounding the female body. Her work contains strong religious undertones and has often been described as “Catholic” in nature and aesthetic— clean, pure, and ordered. At the same time, many of the surfaces and materials used in her work simulate flesh in order to evoke the body, an alluring and seductive association of great significance.

In particular, Thompson shares her own experiences as a young woman raised in the religious South. In her newly produced body of work, she continues this investigation yet the focus has become not only that of the aesthetic but that of the process— technique, pattern, place and content, and the historical made contemporary. She addresses her own concerns with beauty, desire, vulnerability, veiling, and body centered guilt. In aligning herself with Hamlet’s drowning Ophelia, Thompson metaphorically succumbs to the cold blue waters breathlessly searching for redemption as the voice of her soul is silenced.
Thompson’s meticulously crafted work utilizes hand bookbinding, digital photography, screenprinting, letterpress and relief.

Cynthia Thompson lives in Memphis, Tennessee and is currently Professor of Book and Paper Arts and Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Memphis College of Art. Thompson has also been visiting faculty at University of Georgia’s study abroad program in Cortona Italy, was the recipient of the 2003 Tennessee State Arts Commission Fellowship Grant and has been awarded numerous residencies including Yaddo, Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts, Women’s Studio Workshop Book Art Residency, the Visual Studies Workshop Book Art Residency, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Atlanta Printmakers Studio and most recently was awarded the 2011 Summer Senior Artist in Residence Book Art and Printmaking Residency at the Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland, Oregon.

The exhibition is in the Bobick Gallery, located on the first floor of the Humanities Building on the UWG campus. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday 9 am-4 pm and by appointment. Closed during University holidays.  All gallery events are free and open to the public. Parking is available in the Visitor lot on West GA drive across from the Townsend Center or in the Academic Quad lot after 5:30pm.

Carrollton Collects:
Prints from the WPA

The WPA exhibition can be accessed by clicking here.

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