The Steffen Thomas Museum of Art hosted its annual Founder’s Day event Sunday evening at its gallery in rural Buckhead.
Attendees celebrated the life of Sara Douglass Thomas (1907-2009), the artist’s wife and muse who took it upon herself to create a permanent home for her husband’s life’s work following his death in 1990.
Sara opened STMA in 1997, and it remains among a few museums nationwide dedicated to showcasing the creations of a single artist, Thomas, who was exceptionally prolific in many mediums.
The event began with a welcoming address by STMA Board President Don Roman, followed by remarks from Atlanta-based Yu-Kai Lin, an expert art curator who, since 2008, has owned and operated Kai Lin Art, a popular contemporary gallery in Atlanta’s West Midtown region.
“This space is important. I feel that all museums that reflect the community they’re in are important,” said Lin, who was making his first visit to STMA. “So, they had me come to speak on Founder’s Day on the state of art as it relates to the museum and as it relates to where we are in the contemporary art world.”
Lin also spent time interpreting Thomas’ “Fishers of Men,” a unique large painting in oil and asphalt from 1978 on a screened window hanging on the wall behind the speaker’s podium.
“From an art historical perspective, it’s very reminiscent of Picasso through the figures and the cubism of the people. The outlining of the figures, though, is that they don’t have faces, so literally, they could be anybody, but they’re a collective. There are seven of them, which is a Biblical number, and a historically significant number as well. And seven continents, seven deadly sins. So, there’s a lot of layers of seven, and there’s a lot of movement,” he said.
“I like the sense of color and the scale of it all, and there is a reason why they hung it at the center of the entire museum, where people stand and talk. His work is really about connection and about humanity’s connection with one another and the brotherhood of man, just like his famous quote.”
Following a dinner courtesy of Harvest & Honey in nearby Rutledge, STMA Director Alyson Vuley and past director Lisa Thomas Conner, the artist’s daughter, addressed the audience. Thomas Conner also presented a pair of Charlie Bonner Awards for Advancing Art Education to retired Morgan County Charter Schools teachers Marjean Meadow and Laura Rice.
Each received an elegant glass trophy to recognize their efforts to instill a love and appreciation of art in the local community’s youth.
A graduate of UGA’s Lamar School of Art, Meadow retired from Morgan County Middle School in 2021. Since then, she’s volunteered at STMA and worked frequently with Thomas Conner, but receiving the award was unexpected. “I had no idea; it was quite a surprise,” she said.
Meadow recalled several trips made with her students over the years to STMA, where they worked on several collaborative projects.
“It was tied into different themes. For instance, the first project was specifically mosaic, which the high school came up with as a theme. And another project we did was with music, and our kids had to interpret music in some type of visual, which was in clay ceramic projects that time,” Meadow explained. "So, we used different mediums, and from there, we went in different directions. We probably had as many ideas as we had kids.”
Rice, meanwhile, retired from Morgan County Elementary School in 2022 after teaching art for nearly 30 years, including from 1994 through 2001 at Putnam County Middle School. In most recent school years, she would bring her students to STMA just to expose them to the museum experience, and then have them create an artwork of their own inspired by the work of Steffen Thomas.
“Museums are so important,” Rice stated. The guest speaker (Lin) was talking about creating and extending culture and being responsive because art is so responsive to what’s going on in the world.
“Being able to talk about art is really what we consider refined education. But I was also very interested in the 21st-century skills of communication, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration,” she continued. “So, in an art museum, you experience that, and you practice it. You can have kids sit around a painting, and you can start asking questions … When you come into the museum, you’re actually responding to real art, and that’s just so important.”
Rice also mentioned she appreciated the unique awards she and Meadow received.
“It’s such a nice award; they both are. I don’t know where or who made this, but it’s beautiful, and it shows you how classy this museum is,” she said. “It’s not a little trinket. I mean, it’s a beautiful, respectful, gorgeous piece of art itself. So, they gave art to us, which is perfect.”