Friday, Oct. 27, 2006 | 7:39 a.m.
What: Artist reception for Mickalene Thomas' "Brawling Spitfire"
When: 6-8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Dust Gallery, 1221 S. Main St.
Admission: Free
Information: 880-3878 or www.dustgallery.com
Mickalene Thomas' paintings are a window into 1970s America and, more specifically, her personal nostalgia.
The Afros are as iconic as the wood paneled-walls. The layers of patterned fabric are as iconic as the sexual women lounging on them.
Thomas, 36, calls herself a product of the '70s, growing up in New Jersey around the family matriarchs during the black power movement.
"The women were very much the center," the Brooklyn artist says. "For me it's a celebration of that sense of beauty and strength. The Afro becomes another symbol of who we are, where we're from.
"But my work is beyond the notion of blackness. It's more of a cultural experience. Even though I'm a black woman, that's not what defines me because I'm living in an amalgamated world."
Thomas is a rising star. A year ago her paintings were selling for $14,000; now they're selling for $25,000. She has a solo show at Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, which is known for launching careers.
"Brawling Spitfire," a show opening this weekend at Dust Gallery on Main Street, features her new work: women wrestling in animal print leotards. The paintings continue the '70s theme and are made with rhinestones, which fill out the hair and teeth, create the prints on the clothing and blend with the skin, adding more life to the work.
"It's like a return to figurative, but it has the great folk art reference," Dust co-owner Naomi Arin says. She first saw Thomas' work in an office at New York's Proposition Gallery, which represents the artist.
"It's about glorifying that time. As troubled as those times were, as difficult as the aesthetic decisions were, now here we are in 2006 and it's OK. This show is all about nostalgia, Afros and the rumpus room you'd play when visiting friends of family in Connecticut. Whatever your reference point is, that's what it is all about."
"Brawling Spitfire" doesn't contain the sexy pinup style works for which Thomas is known. In fact, the wrestling works, which she says are more "personal quasiself-portraiture," were born out of her frustration at being too predictable as an artist and the struggle of figuring out where she fits in the art world: "where you're represented, where you're not represented."
However, the paintings, based on titles and words from Eartha Kitt, Donna Summer and Millie Jackson, continue her portrayal of the power and sexuality of black women.
The use of rhinestones, she says, started at Yale, where she was working with glitter: "I've always worked with nontraditional material. I wanted to find a medium that represented elements of painting that didn't become an accoutrement, but another element of the painting."
The medium is as biographical as the subject matter. The use of craft materials and their role in outsider art, combined with traditional painting, serves as a metaphor for her poor-to-middle class upbringing in New Jersey and her graduate studies at Yale, where she received a master's of fine art.
More than anything, Thomas says, "I wanted to find a new way of making a painting."
And without the rhinestones? "It would be boring. It's not enough."
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