Draft:Zipporah Camille Thompson

Zipporah Camille Thompson (she/her/hers), is an artist and educator residing in the Atlanta metro area in the state of Georgia. Her background is in textiles and sculpting, and she is best known for her emphasis on highlighting the history, trauma, and lived experiences of Black and Indigenous people in North America through her work.

Early Life

Zipporah Camille Thompson was born in North Carolina to a librarian mother and an artist father. Her father instilled a love of illustration in her as a child by creating books of artwork alongside her. An affinity for the fantasy world and dreaming of adventure was passed on to Thompson from her mother's passion for books.

She launched her exploration of blending art, fantasy, and nature from a young age. Her years of growing up exploring landscapes and the history of the Carolinas began her journey of discovering her own artistic niche.

Artistic Exploration

As Zipporah began to grow as an artist, her family experienced significant losses that drove her to wrestle with the idea of memories and how objects can impact our healing and managing grief. During childhood family trips, Thompson had been collecting shells, rocks, and other items to relive those memories. When grief began to set in, these items gave her great comfort so her early art installations resembled similar found objects.

As her artwork evolved, she started reaching back to those fantasy worlds she explored as a child and began to incorporate that into her artwork as well. The idea of what she refers to as the "eternal return" drives her creations now and attempts to combine our memories and lived experiences with outer space, history, and the ways that humans are connected.

Academic and Professional Background

Zipporah Camille received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2008 with a concentration in Fiber work. After her relocation to Georgia, she landed a series of exhibitions with institutions such as the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation and the Georgia Museum of Art before earning a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Georgia in 2015.

Throughout her career, Thompson has been able to complete fellowships across the country with organizations like OxBow in Saugatuck, MI, and The Hambridge Center in Rabun Gap, GA. In 2018, her endeavors won her the NCECA Multicultural Fellowship Award and the Idea Capital Award for her piece, Cielos Noches. She has been able to take her art exploration around the globe through her POCOAPOCO Artist Residency in Oaxaca, Mexico, and completed a recent residency in Vashon Island, WA at the Vashon Artist Residency.

As her experiences have expanded, she has continued to pull from her education in fiber and textile work to focus on lifting the stories of marginalized groups by exploring how landscapes and history blend with human connection. Thompson's childhood fascination with found objects, rocks, and the like has also led to her artwork standing apart from standard sculpting and weaving to create a unique blending of mediums. One art critic said that "she resists the conventions of framed 2D art or upright sculpture, opting instead for a multidisciplinary approach."

She has continued the exploration of memory that she touched on during her early periods of family grief through exhibitions like "the ocean wept rainbows" at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in her state of residence, Georgia. This project aimed to connect the memory of her grandmother to materials like gold rice, beads, and safety buckles.

This artist has remained very active in galleries and exhibitions both on her own and in collaboration with other artists across the United States.

She has most recently begun a position as Assistant Professor of Textiles at Georgia State University. Whitespace Gallery continues to represent her work as an artist while she pursues teaching at the university.

Residencies and Awards

Full List of Residencies and Awards

Year
2023	Vashon Artist Residency, Vashon Island, WA
2022	Margie E. West Prize, Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
2021	Nominee, Joan Mitchell Fellowship Program, Joan Mitchell Foundation, New York, NY
2021	MOCA GA Working Artist Project Fellow, (Museum of Contemporary Art GA), Atlanta, GA
2020	Atlanta Artadia Award, Artadia, New York, NY
2020	Judith Alexander Foundation Relief Fund for GA Visual Artists Grant
2020	National Museum of Women in the Arts (GA Committee) Artist Relief Fund Grant, Atlanta, GA
2019	Nominee, Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, New York, NY
2019	Mass MOCA Artist Residency, North Adams, MA
2018	OxBow Residency + Full Fellowship, Saugatuck, MI
2018	Art on the Beltline, Urban Apiary Westside Project, collab w/ Dorothy O'Connor, Atlanta, GA
2018	POCOAPOCO Artist Residency, Oaxaca, MX
2018	Idea Capital Award, Research & Development Travel Grant, Cielos Noches
2018	NCECA Multicultural Fellowship Award
2018-2020	The Creatives Project, Studio Resident, The Goat Farm Studio, Atlanta, GA
2017	Zenobia Award + Residency, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Newcastle, ME
2016	Artadia Atlanta Finalist
2015	ACRE Residency, Artists' Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions, Steuben, WI
2015	Distinguished Fellowship + Residency, The Hambidge Center, The Rogers Fellowship for Textile Arts, Rabun Gap, GA
2014	Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts, Textile Scholarship + Lamar Dodd School of Art Craft Studies Scholarship, Gatlinburg, TN
2014	Elsewhere Museum, Artist Residency, Greensboro, NC, Echoes of the Forest
2012-2015	Graduate Teaching + Studio Assistantship, Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA