Garden to Cosmos

In recognition of Black History month, students studied the works of Alma Thomas (1892-1978), the first African American woman to have a solo exhibit (The Whitney/NYC) and the first African American woman to have art in the permanent collection of The White House. She was from Washington DC where she taught Middle School Art for over 35 years. After retirement her abstract painting career took off. Her work was associated with the Washington Color School art movement. She was inspired by nature and space - especially the lunar moon landing in 1969. “I experienced the play of the dark and the light, using the bars of color in previous paintings. I dissected, elongated, enlarged, rounded them. I formed geometric designs—angles, curves and circles. They all illustrate my impressions of nature in action.” Students used a square paper to paint their own Garden to Cosmos starting with a central dot of color. We reviewed color temperatures and groupings of primary and secondary colors along with tints and shades. Students chose their palette and painted from the center out with small "thumbprints" of color to complete the broken-line concentric circles of color. They mimicked Alma Thomas' staccato paint strokes. Students were encouraged not to leave too much white space and to imagine their lines going off the edges of the paper and returning to the corners of the page.