C. David Thomas was born in Portland, Maine, USA on July 15th 1946. He is the middle child with an older sister and younger brother. He graduated from Westbrook High School in 1964, and the Portland School of Art in 1968. He was married to Jean Milliken in June of 1968. They are still married.
He joined the U.S. Army to avoid the draft in 1968, and was sent to Pleiku, South Vietnam, to serve as a combat engineer/artist for one year April 11, 1969-April 10, 1970). During that year he was assigned to the 20th Engineer Battalion (Combat). He drew blueprints for several months before volunteering to drive a jeep for Major Jim Yenekis. He spent 6 months driving the roads in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam from Pleiku to Bon Me Thuat to Qui Nhon and Kontum. He returned to the U.S. to complete his military service at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, leaving the Army in 1971.
After leaving the U.S. Army, Thomas joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War to protest U.S. War in Viet Nam. Much of his artwork was the focus of the anti-war movement. Thomas completed graduate school at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1974, and began a teaching career at Emmanuel College in Boston in 1976 where he taught studio art until 2001. He is currently an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.
In 1987, he returned to Vietnam for the first time. Since then he has made more than fifty trips to Vietnam to do research and conduct programs of cultural exchange between the United States and Vietnam. In 1990 he began the Indochina Arts Partnership (formerly the Indochina Arts Project) and has been the director ever since. As director he is responsible for all activities including programs, fundraising, accounting, and managing of staff.
Since 1990 he has curated two major exhibitions As seen by Both Sides: American and Vietnamese Artists Look at the War and An Ocean Apart: Contemporary Art from the United States and Vietnam. He has also curated several smaller exhibitions that have traveled to museums and universities across the United States. In 2000, he was awarded the “Vietnam Art Medal” by the government of Vietnam in recognition of his contributions to the arts in that country.
He received a Fulbright Grant in 2002 to conduct his work in residence in Hanoi. He and his wife Jean lived and worked in Hanoi for two years from 2002-04. During this time he and designed the book HO CHI MINH – A Portrait, published in 2003. From 2002 until 2004 he also worked at the Viet Nam National Museum of Fine Arts redesigning their marketing and museum brochures. In 2007, he designed a major book on Ho Chi Minh City artist Huynh Phuong Dong which was published by the IAP.
David is currently working on an artist’s book of stamps that will unlikely ever be printed by the U.S. Post Office. He is also working on a series of digital prints with pastel and drawing. The subjcet of these prints is WAR.
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