Local artist Damon J. Thomas shares an emotional art collection that explores human sympathy with a unique “Some Things Just Hurt” exhibition on display at Lone Star College-CyFair through April 15.
“We are very excited to present an in-person, site-specific sculptural installation created for our Bosque Gallery by Damon, a Houston-based artist whose practice centers on visual storytelling with found objects,” said Jasleen Sarai, LSC-CyFair Bosque Gallery Director. “We will have a live walk-through and interview with Damon at 6:30 p.m. March 4 on Instagram.”
On his website damonthomasart.com, Thomas said “Every piece of art I make begins with a story. Whether I find it in myth, religion, psychology or a scrawl of graffiti, story drives me as an artist and gives me the energy to transform blocks of clay into sculptures, often life-sized….I don’t choose stories so much as they choose me.”
Last March, that story was a young bicyclist killed by a school bus a couple blocks away from where Thomas was installing a sculpture on Heights Boulevard. Intrigued by the memorials created to honor such victims, Thomas thought about the emotional impact they have on close survivors and the community at large.
For this Bosque Gallery exhibition, he envisioned an open, collective memorial created from stuffed animals, balloons, graffiti and other elements that survivors use to express love, pain, grief and other feelings. He scoured thrift stores gathering materials, many of which carried their own histories,
Thomas said he “sees these disparate found objects as coming together for an ephemeral representation of sympathy and solidarity before being released back into the urban recycling stream, like seeds from a spring dandelion.”
This local artist’s work is included in the Houston Airport System's Portable Works Collection and has been exhibited locally at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Art League Houston, Art Car Museum, Artspace111 and The Jung Center, just to name a few.
“I hope that my art is soulful and meaningful,” he said. “If it is, then I have accomplished what I set out to do as an artist.”
Learn more about Thomas in the live walk-through and interview available at instagram.com/bosquegallery. Videos and images of his work will be available at LoneStar.edu/bosquegallery and on Instagram as well.
Walk-in hours for Thomas’s exhibition are from 2 p.m. – 6 p.m. Thursdays (limited to 13 visitors) or by appointment via email a week in advance to Heather.Braman@LoneStar.edu.
All Bosque Gallery’s virtual content can be followed on Instagram: @bosquegallery. Upcoming exhibitions feature artist Walter Wagner as well as LSC-CyFair art students. For the schedule and exhibition information, go to LoneStar.edu/exhibition-schedule.