After more than 30 years of teaching at Dartmouth, Thompson's accomplishments will be displayed at the Hood Museum of Art from April 9 through May 29 in her first solo exhibit, "The Alchemy of Design."
Thompson, whose art has previously been displayed in the Strauss Gallery and the Jaffe-Friede Gallery on campus, combines stylistic elements from other cultures and artists and expands on her interest in collage in "The Alchemy of Design."
Thompson draws inspiration from her travels around the world, channeling the manuscript texts she saw in Ireland and the carpet weavings and tapestries of Morocco.
Visitors to Thompson's exhibit can see the direct influences of these travels reflected in her work. Many of her pieces feature neatly-outlined manuscript text and one collage titled "Tit 'n-teskourt" is inspired by Berber carpet pattern motifs.
Thompson's pieces incorporate intricate details and subtle layers of paint or collage with enormous precision and detail, so much so that even a small corner of a piece could serve as a complete composition.
In several installation pieces in the exhibit, Thompson arranged numerous painted maple syrup bucket lids. While each lid could stand alone as its own art piece, Thompson's focus on the larger picture brings out the continuity of lines and patterns from one lid to another, or the gradation of color from one end of the installation to the other to create a fuller work of art.
"I use design in a transformative way designing something that moves from one point to another place, taking details and turning them into something new, collage fragments being a piece to a whole," Thompson said.
Thompson draws inspiration from Renaissance masters and artists such as French painter Edouard Vuillard. Thompson is self-taught in art history and began learning about artists who she felt passionate about when she was in her 30s.
"Anything I learned, I learned because I was copying something I loved or looking at a museum and wanted to go back to a certain piece," Thompson said.
Thompson began her career as an artist at the Spokane Studio School, a small independent school focused on developing a community of artists, she said.
At the school, students "weren't taught in the formulaic way," Thompson said. "They were taught to find their own journey in their work. It was taught by personal expression."
Thompson brings this passion for exploration and personal expression to her work in the classroom.
At Dartmouth, Thompson teaches beginning and advanced levels of painting and drawing, senior seminars and a special topics class in collage.
"I try to teach in a way for people to bring something of themselves to their work," Thompson said.
While Thompson values self-expression in her students' work, she also emphasizes the fundamentals of drawing and painting, to build a foundation for students to approach their work more independently.
"I think it's great when we draw in class because she goes around and messes with your drawing a bit until you see that she's focusing more on the big picture and trying to feel the relationship between the objects on the paper," Meeta Prakash '13, one of Thompson's Drawing I students, said.
Similarly, Thompson tries to incorporate the fundamentals that she emphasizes to her students in her own art.
"The aspects of design such as reorganizing space relate to something I would do in my own work," Thompson said.
Reflecting on the overall purpose of her art, Thompson said she hopes that people will be changed by her art just as she was changed by the process of creating the pieces.
"I think the ultimate goal is to have art as a celebratory experience, a celebration of life," Thompson said. "It's uplifting. I see my artwork as being participatory. The people looking at it can see the process of making it, and people come away with more."
