Henry Evan Thomas ( he/him )

My current body of work deals with queer relationships, identity, and moments of intimacy and sensuality. I portray the queer figure on functional cups and vessels to take up space in historically marginalized settings, along with botanical symbols to stand in for the queer figure. I create my work through mold making, digital sculpting, and underglaze painting techniques on slip-casted porcelain that all inform each other through my research and studio practice.

The two main botanical symbols I use throughout my body of work are the pansy flower and the dandelion to reflect on how they relate to masculine queer identities in the past century. Pansy is a term for an effeminate gay man in the United States popularized in the 1930s as a rise of underground queer nightlife and performing spaces swept major metropolitan cities. This time was referred to as the pansy craze. Pansy continued being used in a derogatory manner throughout the later part of the 20th century as the heteronormative view of the nuclear family and a man's role in the family dominated the Suburban American consciousness. Though this insult has fallen out of fashion in most popular consciousness, it is still used as an insult on masculine queer identity in the modern age. My usage of the pansy is an act of reclamation of the term, the flower, and the beauty it brings to my work such as my Golden Pansy Cups series where I depict pansy flowers in pairs in gold luster painting on top of green celadon glazes, and my Purple Pansy Cups series where I depict acts of queer physical intimacy on the front of the cups with swathes of purple pansy flowers blooming all around the cups with glistening silver highlights.

Much like the pansy, the dandelion is used in my work to reclaim the term dandy, another derogatory term used for effeminate gay men. In my Dandy Vases, I use the dandelion as a mirror for how society sees the queer figure alongside motions of physical intimacy and tenderness. The dandelion originates in Europe and Asia and was brought over through colonization. Through centuries of spreading, it is now considered a weed and invasive species to be exterminated from lawns and gardens across North America. Though the analogy only goes so far, there has been a great effort to exterminate what is deemed “queer ideology” across North America through small areas of progress the LGBTQ+ community has experienced in the past decade. My Dandy Vases give the viewer a look into the beauty in the botanical imagery of the bright yellow dandelions and the beauty of queer tenderness and intimacy through the actions painted on the vases as well as the action of the vases leaning and making their impressions on each other.  

Through my body of work, much like my own growth as a queer person in the American South, I emulate and transform through a variety of processes, but ultimately subvert to create a space for queerness. My functional forms are informed by functional forms found in the home and are created through digitally designing, 3D-printing, molding, and replicating said forms through slip-casting in porcelain. This mode of creating functional forms in the ceramics community has come to fruition in the past decade, and still has some slight disagreements towards its usage, its overall aesthetic, and whether or not it can still be deemed “hand-made” or valued as highly. Working in this mode of making, along with the discourse it has existed in, reflects itself in my practice as a queer mode of making, and I want to continue working through this and how this feeling exists in my current studio practice. 

Henry Evan Thomas (b. 2000) is an emerging interdisciplinary artist and art educator from Plano, Texas. He graduated from the University of North Texas with a B.F.A. in Art Education and a B.F.A. in Studio art with a Concentration in Ceramics, Drawing & Painting, and Sculpture with a minor in Art History. He is currently living in Atlanta, Georgia studying for an M.F.A. in Ceramics from Georgia State University. Between studying, Henry has experience teaching art in public school ages K-12 as well as teaching at the university level. Henry has been actively showing his work in the Texas DFW area and abroad. Most recently, his work has been a part of 2021 CAMEO Texas Emerging Artist Show, Gallery 500X’s LGBTQAI+ 2022 Showcase, Gallery 500X’s College Expo 2022, Indianapolis Art Center’s Modern Craft 2022 Exhibition, ArtSpace111’s 9th Annual Texas Juried Exhibition, NCECA’S Juried Student Show alongside the 2023 NCECA Conference CURRENT, and Clay Center of New Orleans’s Clay: A Southern Census, Greater Denton Arts Council’s Materials Hard & Soft, Mug Madness 2024, and Savannah Clay Community’s SIP 2024.