Chip Thomas
Messages from the Underworld
February 7–March 3, 2019
Artist talk and screen printing event: RESCHEDULED for Friday, February 8, 5:30PM
In Messages from the Underworld, Chip Thomas brings together a diverse range of photo-based work, including wheat paste murals, installations, and screen prints, to focus on the many ways that the agricultural development of corn has shaped the land, people, and cultures of the Americas.
He observes, “when one thinks of what it means to be an American – whether it’s indigenous people praying with its pollen, religious groups ingesting it to curb sexual desires, people with amputations and blindness from type II diabetes, or Central Americans pursuing a safer and better life, we have to examine our relationship with corn."
Chip Thomas, aka “jetsonorama,” is a native of North Carolina and a photographer, public artist, activist, and physician who has been working between Monument Valley and The Grand Canyon in the Navajo Nation since 1987. He coordinates the Painted Desert Project – a community building effort which manifests as a constellation of murals across the western Navajo Nation, painted by artists from all over the world. Thomas is a member of the Justseeds Artists Co-operative, an international cooperative of 30 socially engaged artists. His large-scale photographs can be seen pasted in the northern Arizona desert, on the graphics of the Peoples Climate March, the National Geographic Blog, 350.org, and the Huffington Post.
