The Steffen Thomas Museum of Art announced that Steffen Thomas: Rock & Chisel, a documentary on the life of noted artist Steffen Thomas, will screen at 7:45 p.m., Oct. 18 at Athens Ciné, following a 6:30 p.m. reception in the Ciné LAB.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with film director Jesse Stephen Freeman and Lisa Thomas Conner, daughter of the artist, and moderated by Professor Richard Neupert, a member of the Ciné board and the Charles H.
Wheatley Professor of the Arts at the University of Georgia.
Born in 1906 in Bavaria, Steffen Thomas completed an apprenticeship with a stone mason before attending the prestigious Academy of Fine Art, Munich. Thomas emigrated to the United States in 1929 to work as an artisan. He soon settled in Atlanta, where he became an in-demand portrait and monumental sculptor.
Thomas built a long list of clients and subjects, including Martha Berry, George Washington Carver, Moina Michael, Henry Grady, and numerous elected officials. He was a member of a coterie of artists based in the Midtown area, working and gathering around Fort Peace, also known as The Castle.
After starting a family, he bought a small farm in Stone Mountain, where he built a sprawling home and studio.
In the 1960s, Thomas moved away from commissioned work and began to follow his own artistic vision in earnest.
He worked in myriad forms of media, including oils, watercolors, drawings, and the three-dimensional work for which he is most well-known.
Upon selling the Stone Mountain property in 1971 and returning to Midtown he sold many of his larger works or donated them to museums and municipalities. It was around this time his most recognizable sculpture, Trilon, was installed at Colony Square in Atlanta, where it now sits on the southeast corner of Peachtree Street and 15th Street. In the film, curator and artist Kevin Sipp calls Trilon, “Just a phenomenal piece.
A gateway sculpture to the City of Atlanta that is recognized worldwide.”
Trilon is owned by the City of Atlanta.
Steffen Thomas: Rock & Chisel was written and directed by Freeman, who also directed Somebody Else, Somewhere Else: The Raymond Andrews Story, which screened at Ciné in 2011. The Rock & Chisel screening is made possible by a grant from The Halle Foundation.
The UGA Department of Theatre and Film Studies is a presenting partner. Admission to both the reception and the screening is free.