Conway Thompsons journey as an artist is marked by a number of turning points. But it was the start of her journey that has remained her most powerful influence. Her inspiration is rooted in farm life in a female dominated household. Thompson remembers the cardboard farm her mother made for her sheep and cows, a farmer and a wife, a house and a barn ... She remembers the day they dug for clay along the river that bordered their Hanover County farm. Her mother laid boards across two sawhorses giving Conway her first workbench. She took life-drawing classes at the Art students League in New York and in 1950 obtained a scholarship to Cooper Union School of Art. To many the slow work of the stone carver had lost its appeal, but Thompson was attracted to the brooding, solitary pace and physical challenge. A masters degree in sculpture from the Instituto Allende in Mexico brought her to become the first director of the Hand Workshop, in Richmond. Many consider her contribution of craft as art her most important. Writing grants, curating exhibits and coordinating the first craft shows left no time for her art. In 1968, Thompson booked passage by freighter to Europe, anxious that her life as a sculptor had ended. She returned to Virginia eight months later with crates of work. The Italian foundry town of Pietrasanta had called to her training. And one does what ones inner self dictates, she adds. Cassandra Cossitt |
![]() A Retrospective Catalog of the work shown Longwood Center for the Visual Arts |