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Conway Thompson's Art Reflects Her Love of Life in the Fields

By Robert Meritt
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

As an artist and a native of rural Virginia, Conway Thompson has always felt something special for the life of the fields, for the farmer and the solitary philosopher. 

"I've always felt I had something to give of my own, that someday I'd be able to find a way to say something very personal, and I think that time has come," Ms. Conway said one day last week following a brisk walk around the pond on her Buckingham County farm. 

"Whether or not anybody is going to appreciate my statement, what I have said, I'm not sure," she continued. "But I can't worry about that. This is an important series, a personal series, and it is my legacy to Virginia."

Ms. Conway has been working on her "Agrarian Series" for the past eight years, and she has now brought it to Richmond for exhibition at the University of Richmond's Marsh Gallery. It opens today from 3:30 to 5p.m. and will remain on view through Oct. 30. 

Trained as a sculptor and noted for her stone carvings and earlier constructions, Ms. Conway's "Agrarian Series" is a collection of assemblages, works that combine old farm implements, things taken from the fields, with the natural materials of wood and stone, and with poetry, a personal statement drawn from history and emotion. 

"What I have tried to do is create a sculptural environment, a dramatic and emotional environment of sculpture and poetry," she said. "I have tried to transform a gallery into a barn room, into a temple, a church; that's what it is to me, a religious statement."

It is different kind of show. The poems are very personal, some based on her own rural ancestors, others on the emotion and sensitivity of the rural life.

A WORK ENTITLED "For a Young Cousin Long Dead" includes the skull of a horse killed in battle during the Civil War, the fatal bullet hole clearly visible in its forehead; "The Hunted Hart" relates to the ritualistic deer-killing of rural Virginia; while "I Dreamed I Went Courting Behind the Morgan Mare" includes spokes from an old wagon wheel, traditional symbol of the farming life.

"I can admit that when I first started on this, I had my doubts, I wondered if it might not be silly," Ms. Conway noted. "But I don't feel that way anymore. Now that it has been on display and I have heard reactions 

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[[image]] 
Photo by Katherine Wetzell
Conway Thompson Sculpture