Lava Thomas
LOT 18
Eye of a Monument, 2025
Ink, graphite, and Conte pencil on paper
12x12 inches (unframed)
Courtesy of the artist and Rena Bransten Gallery
Suggested retail value: $15,000
Starting bid: $7,500
About the Artwork
Lava Thomas (Headlands Artist in Residence ‘17) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is grounded in an ethos of social justice. In 2024, The San Francisco Arts Commission unveiled her first public artwork, Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman: A Monument to Honor Dr. Maya Angelou for the San Francisco Main Library, the first monument to honor a Black woman in the city’s Civic Art Collection. The full portrait was based on Dr. Maya Angelou’s 1973 interview with Bill Moyers. Eye of a Monument is a drawing based on the 12 x 12 inch bronze sample which was used to demonstrate the translation of a 2D drawing into 3D bronze prior to the monument’s fabrication. Thomas’s unique process-based work, made especially for Headlands’ Auction, scales the expansive spirit of the monument into an intimate piece of history, an homage to Dr. Angelou that is at once personal and universal.
Thomas’s work has been exhibited at institutions including the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta; and the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, among others. 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, and a KALA Art Institute’s Master Artist Award.
HOW TO BID:
Bidding is available from May 18-June 5.
1) Text 'READY TO BID' or call 628-237-8195.
OR
2) Visit Headlands' Auction Exhibition to see the artwork and bid via pen & paper.