Lava Thomas shapes public memory through large-scale drawings, portraiture, monuments, and site-specific installations. Engaging civic, family, and historical archives, her work gives renewed presence to lives and narratives that inform the American story. Her work has been exhibited at leading institutions across the country, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Harvard University, the Museum of the African Diaspora, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, and the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, SFMOMA, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University, among others.

In the fall of 2024, the San Francisco Arts Commission unveiled Thomas’s Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman: A Monument to Honor Dr. Angelou for the San Francisco Main Library, the first public monument dedicated to a Black woman in the city’s civic art collection.

Thomas has received numerous accolades, including an Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors, a San Francisco Artadia Award, a KALA Art Institute’s Master Artist Award, and most recently an honorary doctorate from the California College of the Arts. She was named a YBCA100 Honoree and was recognized as one of the “Women to Watch” by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She has been awarded artist residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, the Joan Mitchell Center, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the Lucas Artists Residency Program at Montalvo Center for the Arts.

Thomas studied at UCLA’s School of Art Practice and earned a BFA from California College of the Arts (CCA), and serves on it’s Presidential Advisory Board. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Headlands Center for the Arts and is a former trustee of the Alliance of Artists Communities and the Djerassi Resident Artists Residency Program. Her work has been featured in Artforum, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, SF Chronicle, The Guardian, and more.

Thomas is represented by Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco, CA.

For inquiries please contact info@jessicasilvermangallery