This holiday season, our FF2 team is excited to introduce Pomegranate, a publishing and printing company that offers its customers “art you can bring home.”
In celebration of Pomegranate’s commitment to inclusivity, we’re proud to spotlight some of the brilliant women artists in their catalogue. Read more about Pomegranate below.
A message from Jan Lisa Huttner (Editor-in-Chief of FF2 Media): This feature about Alma Thomas was originally posted way back in September, soon after my visit to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.
Little did I know then that my trip to MFA/Boston would lead to a relationship with Pomegranate which now includes features on all of the 2022 Pomegranate calendars celebrating women artists.
Kudos to Julia for starting us off with this wonderful tribute to Alma Thomas!
Much like her colorful paintings, Alma Thomas exuded energy and verve, signaling a deep love for the beautiful things in life. Her intricate designs emulating the elegance of nature seem to have poured out of her soul. From her childhood in Georgia to her retirement in Washington DC, Thomas was an inspiration.
Growing up, Alma was the oldest of four daughters in a well-respected family in Columbus (GA). Her father was a businessman and her mother — to whom Alma attributes her creative spark — a dress designer. Although Alma was Black and educational obstacles due to racial discrimination limited her exposure to fine arts, she spent much of her childhood exploring and enjoying nature, art in itself. Eventually, her family moved to Washington, DC to escape the racial violence happening in Georgia, and Alma was able to begin her career as an artist.
In 1924, Alma was the first to graduate from the new arts program at Howard University. Alma is thought to have been the first Black woman– in fact the first woman at all– to receive a bachelor’s degree in art in America. She then earned an MA in education from Columbia University. After that, she began teaching in public schools in DC to support herself while she developed her skills in painting. Alma said of her teaching: “I devoted my life to the children, and I think they loved me; at least those did who were interested in art,” and she was right. While teaching, Alma worked to develop many art programs for her students: among them, the first art gallery in the DC public school system, and a community program for the appreciation of fine arts. Though her own childhood denied her access to her passion, she made sure that her students would not experience the same.
After a thirty-five year career as a teacher, Alma retired, and she was finally able to devote herself to painting full-time.
After a thirty-five year career as a teacher, Alma retired, and she was finally able to devote herself to painting full-time. Much like during her childhood, she began spending her time observing the wonders of nature, but this time she was armed with a canvas and paintbrush to make recreations of her own. Her painting, Alma’s Garden (1968), represents the myriad of colors from her garden, a fitting piece as she spent many afternoons of her retirement at her window, gazing out at the scene in her backyard.
Like Alma’s Garden, all the pieces in Alma’s body of work represented the fantastic colors and general vivacity of nature. In a press release for Columbus Museum of Arts and Sciences in 1982, Alma stated, “Man’s highest aspirations come from nature. A world without color would seem dead. Color is life. Light is the mother of color. Light reveals to us the spirit and living soul of the world through colors.” Her work certainly reflects this sentiment. Her signature style — lovingly coined “Alma’s Stripes”– feature small blocks of bright colors, meticulously placed in intricate patterns to represent the natural world that awed her.
Alma painted at the time of the USA’s biggest innovations in space, and this was an inspiration for her work as well. She wrote: “Today not only can our great scientists send astronauts to and from the moon to photograph its surface and bring back samples of rocks and other materials, but through the medium of color television all can actually see and experience the thrill of these adventures. These phenomena set my creativity in motion.” She created works such as Apollo 12 Splash Down (1970) and Celestial Fantasy (1970) which celebrated the wonders of space in her signature style, “Alma’s Stripes” in bright colors.
Though it was a seemingly universal celebration of life, Alma’s exuberant artwork did not go uncriticized. She emerged as an artist as the Civil Rights Movement broke out. Other Black women questioned how she could paint with such bright colors, such joy, in a time that felt so dark and devastating. Alma responded to these critiques by asserting that her art transcended her own identity as a Black woman. She stated: “It is of all ages, of every land, and if by this we mean the creative spirit in man which produces a picture or a statue is common to the whole civilized world, independent of age, race and nationality; the statement may stand unchallenged.” Without disregarding the gravity of the situation around her, Alma wished for her “creative spirit” to rise above it, to stand independently from her identity as a Black woman, to encapsulate the timeless universality that her artwork merited.
“Do you see that painting… I transform energy with these old limbs of mine.”
This was not the only challenge facing Alma during the time she finally achieved distinction as an artist — she was also nearing the end of her life. As she developed her craft more and more, she felt driven to do bigger things in her art — literally. She said: “I’d like to make [my] canvases bigger, like Sam Gilliam’s, but my arthritis is so bad that I can’t get up on my ladder.” Yet, she persevered. In 1976, at age 84, she completed Red Azaleas Singing and Dancing Rock and Roll Music, an explosion of reds and oranges so dynamic they actually appear to be dancing, on a 13-foot-long canvas. She once said of this painting: “Do you see that painting? Look at it move. That’s energy and I’m the one who put it there… I transform energy with these old limbs of mine.”
In spite of the challenges she faced throughout her life, Alma’s tenacious work brought her impressive distinction as an artist. In 1972, she became the first Black woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum in Manhattan. Her painting Resurrection (1966) was the first work by a Black woman to enter the White House Collection. Her work has been featured in many exhibitions and celebrations throughout the USA.
She was a powerful talent and a delightful human being, and her spirit will live on in her vivacious collection of paintings.
A new Alma Thomas 2022 Wall Calendar is available for purchase on Pomegranate.com. Check it out here!
Remember, the artist receives a greater portion of the proceeds if you buy directly from Pomegranate.
© Julia Lasker (9/24/21) Special for FF2 Media
LEARN MORE
Click HERE to read the My Modern Met post by Arnesia Young in which Alma Thomas’s “Man’s highest aspirations come from nature…” quote appears.
Click HERE to read the Columbus Museum of Arts and Sciences by Regenia A. Perry in which Alma Thomas’s “I devoted my life to the children…” quote appears.
To learn more, visit Alma Thomas’s profile with the National Museum for Women in the Arts.
Check out Pomegranate’s Alma Thomas collection which also contains puzzles and notecards.
Check out the documentary Miss Alma Thomas: A Life in Color.
CREDITS AND PERMISSIONS
Images from Pomegranate’s 2022 Alma Thomas calendar have been provided by Pomegranate and are used here by FF2 Media with their permission. All Rights Reserved by Pomegranate.
“Alma Thomas – Elysian Fields [1973]” by Gandalf’s Gallery is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
