Between the Sun & the Moon: Gail Thacker's Polaroids

Limited edition of 300.

Gail Thacker (born Providence, RI) studied video art, photography and painting at The School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and as a transfer student at The Center for Advanced Visual Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1979-1981. She graduated from The School of The Museum of Fine Arts / Tufts University in 1981.

Espousing her “life as art philosophy,” Thacker and student peers who shared similar views collectively made their mark on the Boston scene through performance, photography, video art, and music. Among these were Mark Morrisroe, who would become a good friend, and also artists Pat Hearn, Jack Pierson, and Stephen Tashjian, later known collectively as The Boston School. Hearn and Morrisroe appear in Thacker’s early moving image works and photographs. Morrisroe’s presence in Thacker’s work and life would prove the longest lasting.

Thacker is recognized as a visual artist most known for her unique use of Polaroid 665 positive/negative film in which her subjects—theatre, friends, lovers and the city—become intertwined with the process and chemistry of her photos. She attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts and has lived and worked in New York City since 1982.

Thacker is represented by the Daniel Cooney Fine Art. She has been exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; Wrightwood 659, Chicago, IL; The Stone Gallery Boston University, Boston, MA, Museum of the City of New York; the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art; Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo (CGAC), Spain; Daniel Cooney Fine Arts, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, Clamp Art, Grey Art Gallery, HowlArts in New York, among others.

Gail’s Polaroid work is included in numerous collections, including the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), The Polaroid Collection, Galician Contemporary Art Center, CGAC (Spain), Museum of the City of New York, The New York Public Library, and Publications include Between the Sun and the Moon Gail Thacker’s Polaroids (City University of New York),The Polaroid Book (Taschen), Mark Dirt (Paper Chase Press), Tabboo! The Art of Stephen Tashjian (Damiani), There Was A Sense of Family; The Friends of Mark Morrisroe (Moderne Kunst Nürnbergsa), Frontiers Journal of Women Studies (University of Nebraska Press) and Gail Thacker Fugitive Moments (Howl Press).

Publisher: QCC Art Gallery Press, 2017
Softcover: 104 pages
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-936658-38-1