Art professor Lydia Thompson receives travel grant for research in Ghana

Lydia Thompson, professor of art, is a recipient of a Lighton International Artists Exchange Program award for travel to conduct research in the West African country of Ghana.

Thompson will be in Ghana from June 22 through July 11, where she will investigate traditional adobe vernacular architecture structures. She is particularly interested in adobe homes in the Sirigu Village, in which the women paint vivid patterns and designs on the exterior of their homes

Additionally, Thompson will visit craft centers in local villages, such as the Afari Pottery Center, where traditional utilitarian pottery methods are practiced. She will document these experiences through photographs, journaling and video recording. She will present a public lecture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana.

“My current work is an investigation of migration and residual ancestral memories that examine space and place of human existence,” Thompson wrote in her artist statement. “Geographical landscapes have provided resources for the continuous mobility of humans, to create communities and construct abodes. These works are reminders of the past and current lessons to learn about the persistence and preservation of one’s own culture.”

The Lighton International Artists Exchange Program provides support for mid-career visual artists and arts professionals “who create work of exceptional quality” to travel internationally. The program also brings foreign artists to the United States. The organization’s mission is “to make the world a smaller place by allowing artists of different cultures to work together, in the hope that lasting friendship and understanding will develop.”

 In fall 2025, Thompson will be an artist-in-residence at Starworks in Star, North Carolina, where she will develop a new body of work inspired by the adobe structures and traditional art forms she documents during her travels in Ghana. At Starworks, she will experiment with atmospheric kilns and develop new surfaces for her work.  

Thompson is a mixed media artist specializing in ceramics that focuses on her cultural narratives. She has won grants and residencies across the U.S. and in countries as diverse as Nigeria, Canada and Denmark, and her work is in private and public collections in the U.S., New Zealand, Austria, Switzerland and Italy.