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Thom Haller

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I call myself an emerging artist despite my recent entry into the demographic 65 and older (the polite way of saying “65 until death”). I present my vision via photographs, prints, and pillows. My Story In the mid-seventies I signed up for a high school art class, which was subsequently cut from the curriculum. I instead enrolled in journalism and spent the next 40 years working with words as a professional writer, teacher, and entrepreneur. Now retired (or partially-retired… depends on the day) I spend time in a real-life art class – looking at the world around me, finding interesting details, and recording them in square-cropped photographs. I take dozens of photos weekly and winnow them – identifying images that have special energy or make me laugh. I now split my time between Washington, DC and Weston, West Virginia. Urban life and Rural life. In DC, I live with my husband, a Manatee County native. We’ve been together for 25 years, many of them spent looking for the best fried grouper sandwich in Manatee and Pinellas Counties. In DC, we live with scars of growing up gay but we are enveloped in a loving and accepting culture. We bought a dwelling in Weston, West Virginia more than a decade ago so I could lend support and care for my parents. I have remained in town even though I had been wounded by the otherness of growing up feeling different than those around me. After surviving K-12, I thought I would surely fit in at the local state college. Instead was labeled “The G*d D*mn F*cking Queer at the End of the Hall” and smashed against the wall by a football team roommate hurling homophobic slurs. The school responded, “Boys will be boys.” One gay friend killed himself. I found solace working in the darkroom at the school’s photography lab. Today’s West Virginia has recently followed Florida’s example: the legislative super majority in the West Virginia legislature recently passed dozens of legislative bills restricting people’s rights — trans rights, specifically. The legislation feels like a punch in the stomach. I am connected to a trans teen, whose parents confided, “we don’t know what we’ll do.” I recently read an article that ended with these questions: “What would happen if the people making that art didn’t feel they needed to leave home in order to survive? What if they felt, ‘I can be here, and I can dream, and I can love, and I can grow old in this place’?” In West Virginia I’m restoring a house that will include a visiting artist studio and exhibition space. What will emerge? A place for healing, perhaps my own healing. At the moment, I try to see beauty and look for connections between my West Virginia life, my DC life, and even my Florida in-law life. At the moment, I find beauty is marred by hatred. I’m exploring how this affects my relationship with place and engaging what emerges in my art.

Artist Bio

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Defiance

Thom Haller

2023, Digital Photo
12"x12", Online Only

For Sale

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