Selected Exhibitions

Evolving Memories, Buffalo Arts Studio, NY, 2024

Living With Art: Modern & Contemporary African American Art from the Collection of Alitash Kebede, Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, 2003

African American Abstraction in Printmaking, African American Museum of Art, San Diego, CA, 1990

African-American Abstractions in Printmaking from the Brandywine Graphic Workshop, California African American Museum, Los Angeles, 1989

Changing Perceptions: The Presence of the Afro-American Visual Aesthetic in Chicago, Columbia College, IL, 1988

Black Eclectic, Muse Gallery, Chicago, IL, 1987

Through A Master Printer: ROBERT BLACKBURN and the Printmaking Workshop, Columbia Museum of Art, SC, 1985

The Second Annual Atlanta Life National Art Competition and Exhibition, Atlanta Life Insurance Co., GA, 1981

Impressions/Expressions: Black American Graphics, Studio Museum in Harlem. NY, 1980

PHYLLIS THOMPSON: Works on Paper, Gallery 10, Washington, DC, 1978

East Coast Printmakers, Gallery 10, Washington, DC, 1976

Phyliss Thompson received her BFA in printmaking from the Philadelphia College of Art and her MFA in printmaking from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. She has a Ph.D. in Urban Education/Art Education from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and is currently a studio artist at Buffalo Arts Studio.

Thompson was an educator at Cornell University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Kutztown University, and Buffalo State College. She also worked in the Chicago Public Schools as a resident artist with Urban Gateways and taught middle school students at the University School of Milwaukee. In 1975, she was part of the Artist-In-Residence program at Artpark in Lewiston, NY.

Her work can be found in the collections of the Buffalo AKG Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Printmaking Workshop, New York, NY, and the Brandywine Workshop Print Collection, Philadelphia, PA

Much like Mavis Pusey and her prints and paintings documenting the urban decay of NYC, artist Phyllis Thompson was inspired by the textures and patterns she found on the surfaces of buildings, sidewalks, and streets of inner city Philadelphia. Thompson took the patterns and imperfections found in the man-made materials and translated them onto paper.

Later, when she moved to New York City, in addition to working with Robert Blackburn at the Printmaking Workshop, she began to incorporate more “woman-made” materials like stitching and bits of textile. She started to create prints using stamps made out of vegetables—carrots, onions, and beets, among them. The print in this collection was most likely made with a carrot stamp!

Thompson also drew inspiration from her grandmother’s quilting traditions, particularly the use of “yo-yos.” A yo-yo is a small, circular rosette made from a gathered piece of fabric, stitched around the edge and pulled tight to create a puckered, textured form. Yo-yos were often sewn together into quilt tops or appliquéd onto larger textiles, a technique especially popular in the 1930s and 1940s. For Thompson, the motif carried both a personal connection to family memory and a symbolic resonance of continuity, resourcefulness, and the bonds of women’s creative labor.