Lenoir, NC – The Caldwell Arts Council is pleased to announce its next public art exhibition, VARIATIONS: Work During the Pandemic. Featuring the works of Lenoir artist Thomas Thielemann, the
show opens September 3, 2021 and runs through October 15, 2021.
The work in this exhibition explores the pandemic in abstract ways. The mixed media work focuses on the relationships between people and locations as the quarantine began. Like people disappeared from social environments in large cities and small towns, so do the figures in these works. They fade into the setting and away from interactions and each other. The intaglio works are more nonobjective, combining black and white linear elements with type. In these works, the ground becomes a constant while the words become a variable. The words make abstract references into situations and events experienced during the past year.
Thomas Thielemann and his wife Lynda Lea Bonkemeyer met as graduate students working on their MFA at Radford University in Virginia (yes, Virginia is for lovers). They spent their first year of marital bliss in Atlanta, Georgia, living in a Midtown apartment the size of a shoe (but with very attractive shoelaces). On December 31, 1999 they quietly snuck into the town of Lenoir, North Carolina an hour or two before Y2K (no, it was not the end of the world as they knew it) and they have lived there ever since. They share a private studio with their dog Susie and are represented by several galleries around the Southeast and Washington DC. Together, they are raising their very charismatic son Auguste, who has put their heads on the moon. Visit moonheadstudio.com to view the work of Thielemann/Bonkemeyer.
The Caldwell Arts Council is located at 601 College Ave SW in Lenoir, NC, and is open to the public Tuesday through Friday from 9am to 5pm.
Photo: Thomas Thielemann’s Boys Clothes.
