Making sure Jacob's star stays high: A conversation with Seattle artist Barbara Earl Thomas and writer Leilani Lewis

Barbara Earl Thomas was at an exhibition in the Netherlands, looking at a portrait of Seattle artist Jacob Lawrence, when a woman walked up and commented that it was wonderful to see Lawrence through the eyes of someone else.

The portrait was made by one of Lawrence's students at the University of Washington, someone who forged a bond with the artist over many years and knew him well. The woman didn't realize, however, that Thomas, whom she randomly struck up a conversation with, was the visual artist behind the portrait.

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Thomas, also a Seattle-based artist, recalled the meeting in a conversation with her friend, arts journalist, and cultural strategist Leilani Lewis on "Meet Me Here," KUOW's arts and culture podcast. Lewis was also present on that trip last summer to Amsefoort, outside Amsterdam, for the first solo European exhibition of Lawrence's work, 25 years after his death.

Thomas made four portraits of Lawrence that are featured in the ongoing exhibit. Standing there in front of them, the conversation with the woman turned to how she used Lawrence's work to teach high school art history.

"She said that she used Jacob's work to talk about American history, American culture," Lewis recalled. "And one of the things she remarked on was George Floyd, during that time, she anchored it to some of Jacob's pieces."

"She cried," Lewis added. "She cried telling that story about teaching her classes and using Jacob's work as a vehicle to talk about really difficult subjects, really challenging concepts, and real honest assessments of the system in the United States."

By the time Thomas met Lawrence, as a UW student in the early 1970s, the Black modernist painter was already a famous artist. But she didn’t know that. She just knew that Lawrence and his wife, artist Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, opened their lives up to her.

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The three of them became close friends, and when Lawrence died in 2000, Thomas decided she was going to keep saying her mentor's name, talking about him and his work. Or as Thomas put it, she was going to "make sure Jacob’s star stays high."

"I can't tell you how many times I was interviewed: 'What was his teaching like? What was he like? What are the stories?'" Thomas said on "Meet Me Here." "I thought, 'Well, I'm going to tell that story, and then as I got older, I realized that I have a bevy of information and experience that I want to make sure doesn't get left on the side of the road without someone picking it up and carrying it forward. And so, that's what I'm doing."

Part of that effort is passing her knowledge on to Lewis. Thomas had already planned a trip to Europe last summer to see her own work unveiled in Seattle’s sister city of Nantes, France. But with Lawrence's exhibit opening in the Netherlands, she asked Lewis to come along.

Thomas is now sharing her mission with Lewis: to keep expanding the artistic legacies of Jacob Lawrence and now his wife.

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Listen to the full conversation between artists Barbara Earl Thomas and Leilani Lewis on "Meet Me Here," KUOW's arts and culture podcast.