Thomas Lyon Mills: The Catacombs
January 8 – February 13, 2010

Opening and Reception: January 8, 2010, 6 – 8 p.m.
Gallery Talk:  7 p.m.  … Thomas Lyon Mills

The Hanging

Watercolor, ink, intaglio prints, charcoal, graphite,
26.75” x 24.75”, 2004-2009

In Rome over the years, Thomas Lyon Mills has obtained permission to pass countless hours in places that are not always accessible to the public: Early Christian catacombs long under lock and key; a large ancient Mithraeum adjoining tunnels under the Baths of Caracalla; passageways beneath the Colosseum; the 5th-century church of Santa Maria Antiqua on the Roman Forum. In his native New York State, he retreats to a hidden spot in the Adirondacks, a natural sanctuary where, as in Rome, he absorbs the spiritual energies of the locale. For Mills, these sites invite contemplation, coalescing time, memory and other intangibles. He records in copious notes his impressions of these places and of the pre-16th-century art that deeply moves him, along with transcriptions each morning of his dreams. All find their way into his dense, middling- to large-scale mixed-medium drawings, which reveal their multilayered secrets slowly and incompletely to the beholder. The drawings may be worked on for a period of years. Shapes materialize as if through a process of geological accretion and erosion, with old marks erased to make room for new ones on what become heavily abraded surfaces. The images are generally dark dream spaces with forms dissolving into amorphous browns and blacks. Occasionally, mists of acrid hues waft by or bright light shines in through a chink. In his damp and silent places, weird fauna and flora appear, of unusual shapes and colors. Some seem to glow in the dark.      – From Art in America, by Michael Amy

Mills’ work is in many public and private collections and has been exhibited widely, including at The Drawing Center in New York, The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA, The Boston Athenaeum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; the Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR; and numerous venues in Europe. As a visiting artist, he has lectured and critiqued at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design; the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville; the Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI; Parsons School of Design, NY; Auburn University, AL; and both Temple University and Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute programs in Rome. He is a Professor in Foundation Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. Mills received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI and a BFA: Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH. An exhibit catalogue for the show is available.