MOCA GA / Calendar

Abstraction and Everyday Life

Abstraction in art can be a real turn off to people.  How do we approach, appreciate and understand something we cannot even name?  But visual abstraction is part of all of our lives; found in the drawings of our children, the quilts across our beds, and even in our food packaging.  We are more comfortable with abstraction than we realize, and abstraction’s capacity to speak for the aspects of our experience that do not translate into words is one of its most practical characteristics.  In this class, we will look to our own lives for inspiration, as we make collages literally comprised of the everyday materials passing through our daily routines.  Bring sturdy cardboard food packaging (like cereal or cracker boxes), junk mail, and/or articles of clothing you do not mind cutting up, and we will explore how to use the colors and textures of these humble materials to make lively, vibrant, abstract collages that turn our “daily-ness” into something we pay more attention to.  This class will offer an introduction to collage process, color relationships, and cultivate an appreciation for the individuality of diverse materials.  Additonally, guests will have the opportunity to visit MOCA GA’s exhibition, “Creecy: A Survey” to see how a unique language of abstraction plays out in the work of Herbert Creecy.

Bio

Barbara Campbell Thomas lives and works in Climax, North Carolina. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Her work has been exhibited nationally, in such venues as the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Atlanta Center for Contemporary Art, the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, Michigan, A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, 1708 Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, the University of Tennessee Concourse Gallery in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Agnes Scott College Dalton Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her MFA from the University of California, Berkeley and her BFA from Pennsylvania State University. She has been an artist-in-residence three times at The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences in Rabun Gap, Georgia, as well as at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. Additionally, she was a fellow at the Yale Summer School of Music and Art in Norfolk, Connecticut.