Tom Lloyd

Artist, activist, and community organizer  Tom Lloyd  (1929–1996) was an early pioneer of using electric light as an artistic medium. Collaborating with an engineer at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), Lloyd developed a highly experimental and technologically advanced art practice in the 1960s that challenged popular understandings of what role the work of Black artists should play. Employing a purposely limited vocabulary of colors, forms, and shapes, Lloyd advocated for a relationship between abstraction and blackness that was greatly debated at the time, and one that continues to animate conversations around artistic practices.