In conjunction with Be Not Still: Living in Uncertain Times, exhibition artist Lava Thomas will join di Rosa collection artist Mildred Howard in conversation to discuss Thomas’s current project, a dynamic installation exploring the topic of solidarity. Comprised of hundreds of suspended pink tambourines covered with various media, the installation serves as a metaphor for praise and protest, and the power of collective resilience and hope. After the talk, guests are invited to hand press buttons inspired by the theme of solidarity.
$10 general / $5 member
Please plan to arrive 15 minutes in advance to allot for shuttle service from admissions to Gallery 2. Guests who arrive more than 45 minutes in advance will be asked to pay general admission.
About the Artists
Lava Thomas (b. 1958, Los Angeles) is a Bay Area–based visual artist whose projects explore the events, figures, and movements that inform and shape our individual and collective histories. Central to her practice are notions of visibility, resilience, and healing, whether the artworks memorialize victims of racial violence, transform galleries into contemplative spaces, or stretch the conventions of portraiture and representation. Thomas’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; the International Print Center New York; the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado; and the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, among other venues. Her work is in the permanent collections of the United States Consulate in Johannesburg, South Africa; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the de Young Museum, San Francisco. She studied at UCLA’s School of Art Practice and received a BFA from California College of the Arts. She is represented by Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco.
Mildred Howard is an Oakland-based artist, activist, and educator, and is best known for large scale installations invoking both collective history and personal narrative. Her work is included in the collections of major museums including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the M.H. de Young Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art. She is also a highly visible figure in the landscape of public art in the Bay Area, with permanent large-scale works at the San Francisco Airport, in the Western Addition of San Francisco, and at the Sacramento International Airport. Howard has taught at Stanford University, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the California College of Arts and Crafts. She continues to work and exhibit internationally; in 2013 her sculpture “Parenthetically Speaking” appeared at the Arsenal Venezia in Venice, where Howard was a finalist for the Arte Laguna Prize. In 2015 she received the Fresno Museum of Art’s Distinguished Artist Award and exhibited “Spirit and Matter,” a thirty-year retrospective, at the Richmond Art Center in Richmond, CA. Howard is represented in San Francisco by Anglim Gilbert Gallery in San Francisco and Bivens Gallery in Dallas.