MICHELLE
THOMAS
Michelle Thomas is an artist-writer dedicated to community, creativity, and connection. She’s making a long-time dream come true with Michelle Thomas Fine Art, a gallery-studio located at the intersection Bernal Heights, Noe Valley, and the Mission.
Michelle’s space is not the typical white box, but warm and welcoming like the artist herself. It’s also an active studio for artists with a table in the gallery for sketching and a downstairs, garden-level workspace full of long surfaces and open space to get dirty and make things.
Michelle first explored this concept in her parent’s basement in St. Louis while in college and working as a high school art teacher. There she made work, taught classes, and helped young artists develop their portfolios. Michelle continued to develop her vision ever since and infused her years of experience making and showing art, working at art museums and design-centric companies to create the current iteration - a multi-functional art space for people to engage with in the way that they choose.
In addition to the gallery and studios, Michelle Thomas Fine Art offers art and music classes for all levels, event rentals, and performances. Below are excerpts from our chat with Michelle about her space, philosophy, and what she looks for in artists. We visited the gallery in Mar 2024 during a performance of FLIGHT by Erin Coyne and Nick Yokley, responding to Jenna Meacham’s solo exhibition Spectral Shift.
Michelle
Every three to four months there's work by an artist that I care about, it might be somebody that I've worked with in the past or somebody whose work I just stumbled across. I'm really planning the way that we planned at the museum, two years in advance to make sure we have a poetic flow of work and to make sure that we are representing a variety of topics and concerns. So this never feels like this is a gallery for only one type of viewer or for one type of artist, we're always changing and becoming what we need to be.
The artists that we exhibit, the main running theme between everything is intersection. That could be their cultural background, but it can also be the media that they're working in. Whatever it is that they represent as an individual or whatever technique that they're working in, they can't be categorized easily. For example, the Hardy Hansen show is wall reliefs using unusual materials and making a parody out of these various severe institutions that we have, it's mixed media and it's irreverent. So just those qualities, it's almost like what you look for in a friend… not taking [themself] too seriously but has serious things to say.
We decide to do a show with an artist two ways, I might invite them [or] we also accept proposals. That way we're aligned on the logistics and we're aligned or we can be in dialogue on what it is they really have to say. I'm very interested in bringing in work that touches the senses, but has something important to say.
Gallery
This never feels like this is a gallery for only one type of viewer or for one type of artist, we're always changing and becoming what we need to be.
The [downstairs] studio level, I love seeing the reactions of people who are artists because they understand they can get their elbows, their hands and everything dirty here. Five artists have a [studio] membership and so they come and go as they please. We also have classes, at least monthly there's a class teaching a different art technique. We try to offer different kinds of classes, some are more formal and some are more social.
The studio is also part of the event space, so an event that's kind of more formal upstairs [gallery level] could trickle downstairs and become a dance party.
This is my art studio. I like to work here so that people who may not even realize that they have an interest in art-making can see something come along and develop a connection with the work that’s being made. I have a background as a high school art teacher, so everything I do has this kind of public engagement bent to it. I want people to feel like [art is] something they can intersect with because they see how it's made. I always show some of my work, so anything that's in progress goes up on the shelves and keeps on changing out.
Studio
So trying to make these things integrate with each other, yes it's a business, but it is an art space. I kind of don't want any outside influence on what I'm trying to do. And that's why I put my name in the title [of the gallery], I’m assuming all the risk. I want the space to reflect the goals that I'm trying to articulate, and some of those are really nebulous still.
One of my goals for the gallery is to help artists [and myself] understand that we can make a living doing something we love. Compensation is not a sin and shouldn't be something that we're ashamed to talk about because it's something really special that we're [artists are] offering. It's something absolutely unique in the world. I want us to feel value for what we create, whether it's an experience or music or it's visual arts. And I'm training myself as well. So yes, this is my work, but it took this much time. It required all this background experience. It required me living my life and getting to the point where I felt like I was able to tell the story of what this piece is about.
Business Practice
Full Circle
Last year he came to visit San Francisco with his family, they toured [the gallery] and when he went downstairs he's like, this is just how you had to set up in St. Louis, this is wonderful. And I [asked if he] would be open to having a show of our work in dialogue, and so that's when we sat down and started planning. That was a full circle moment for me because somebody that I was mentoring and who really helped give me meaning in my life at that time, we're now peers and we're showing together and we're sharing a statement to the world together.
In college I used to have a similar concept in my parents' basement; I was a substitute teacher and [would help] kids who were interested in art build their portfolio for college. [One student] had a family of engineers and were encouraging him to go to school to become an engineer. He went to MICA, got a degree in painting and is doing what he loves.
Michelle Thomas, THE SUN BABES: Eliana. Watercolor on paper, 15 x 22 inches.
Michelle Thomas, Amal. Watercolor on paper with collage flowers, 22 x 30 inches.
Michelle Thomas, Michelle encounters Ajanta. Watercolor on paper, 22 x 30 inches.
Michelle Thomas, Aelius. Watercolor on paper, 22 x 30 inches.