1878 Gallery & Vault

March 8 - June 8, 2025

ArtWalk Reception
Saturday, March 8, 2025
6 – 9 PM
Artist talk at 6:30 PM

GAC’s exhibitions are supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Texas Commission on the Arts. Artist accommodations generously provided by Hotel Lucine.

Ashley Thomas
Solastalgia Hour

The exhibition Solastalgia Hour by Ashley Thomas stems from the artist’s memories and thoughts around nature, industrialization, and solastalgia – the distress that is produced by environmental change. Thomas’s dimly lit graphite drawings and animation in the exhibition are inspired by memories of places as they were in the past, and how they may change in the future. These works reference a range of moments and places in the artist’s life from the sounds of ship fog horns and refinery burn-off flares in the Corpus Christi Hillcrest neighborhood in the 1980s to the sensory universe of lightning bugs and backyard nature in Central Illinois in the 1990s. They reflect on the threats and conflicts to nature and home environments, revealing a sense of grief and disconnection that can be experienced in places considered to be home. The works in this exhibition echo poet Leah Naomi Green’s writing about solastalgia: “I mourn the wood thrush, even while I hear it sing.”

Ashley Thomas (b.1984) is a visual artist based in Corpus Christi, Texas. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Texas and US, including recent exhibitions at Tufts University Art Galleries, Boston, MA; Centro de Artes, San Antonio, TX; The Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX; Austin Central Library, Austin, TX, Presa House Gallery, San Antonio, TX; and Las Cruxes, Austin, TX. Her work is in the collection of Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, TX and has been featured in publications including Glasstire, New American Paintings, and Conflict of Interest.

ashleythomas.org