Designed as a cumulative, touring investigation, and then down became up begins—as befits its location at Lynden—with an outdoor sculpture commission and an emphasis on Thomsen’s 3D practice. embrace (transverse), visible just beyond the gallery’s windows, is echoed in the interior space by light-modulating mobiles, large-scale mural prints and transparencies, and
photographs. Thomsen’s creative process for this exhibition involves evolution, metamorphosis, and repurposing. Her objects and layered photographs draw from personal narratives, the work of her companion artists, and light as a phenomenon.

In this first iteration of and then down became up, Thomsen deploys her research-based practice, and her experiences as a woman and artist, to respond to Lucia Moholy and Hazel Larsen Archer, two visionary women who shaped the avant-garde movements at the Bauhaus and it’s descendant, Black Mountain College. Building on prior explorations of Moholy and her
work, Thomsen embarks on an investigation of Milwaukee native Larsen Archer. Larsen Archer attended Milwaukee State Teachers College before graduate studies at Black Mountain College, where she ultimately served in many roles, including first full-time teacher of photography. Her portraits of the artists gathered there—particularly her photographs of Merce Cunningham in motion—have appeared regularly in exhibitions documenting the experimental school. Larsen Archer left the college in 1953 and, eschewing exhibition, devoted most of her long life to her work as an influential educator.

and then down became up makes a compelling case for the unique experiences of women artists and, by delving into the history of photography to construct creative matrilineages, challenges our understanding of Modernism.