BRICKS NEED MORTAR
by WILLIAM PAUL THOMAS

PRESENTED BY THE BLACK ON BLACK PROJECT

This exhibition is centered on ideas about community building and companionship, stemming from the artist’s reflections on memories of his childhood home.

William Paul Thomas was thumbing through snapshots from a photo album that his mother began compiling in 1992 and found a familiar image of him with his two younger sisters in Catholic school uniforms. They were standing in front of a cement staircase at home that Thomas’s mother painted a vibrant, hot pink.  The color was his mother’s deliberate choice to bring warmth to that apartment unit for her family and made him consider how aesthetics overlap with bonding and nurturing practices. The works in this exhibition embody this sentiment.

Bricks Need Mortar also involves inviting others to help the artist reinforce the memory of his mother’s painting. He uses social media to distill that memory down to a “pink brick.” Others can interpret this form through their own lenses at http://hotpinkbrick.tumblr.com.