MORGANTOWN — Cydney Thomas was always an artistic kid.
The West Virginia University senior came to Morgantown to become a lawyer but changed her mind and switched to a painting major.
Many students have jobs and Thomas is no exception — she runs her own paint-and-sip business.
“Since COVID, I come to you,” Thomas said. “So I realized that a lot of people don’t like to come out for activities since COVID is getting bad again. So they booked me to come to them.”
Thomas said she’s already booked every weekend in March — a full month ahead — which is impressive, considering she just started in January.
You don’t need to be artistic to get a good result at one of Thomas’ paint and sips.
“When I host my paint steps, I sketched them out first and Sharpie so that if they do cover it, they can still see it,” she said. “And a lot of my customers do like that sketch out there. … But if it is easy and I feel like it’s easy enough for a beginner, it won’t be sketched out.”
A Paint and Sip can be booked at her website, cynplyartisticmedia.com, which also features her artwork.
“I’m more of a portrait artist. More so I mean, I can paint landscapes and stuff. It’s not my favorite. I’m not an outdoorsy person. But if it’s like objective or still lifes and portraits, that’s more of my go-to,” Thomas said.
For Thomas’ senior project, she is painting three portraits of girls and applying real African American hair to them.
“Just simply because people say that, you know, we can’t have ethnic hair in workplaces, or … it’s looked down upon. So I want to do that just to showcase that African American hair is very much acceptable no matter if it’s dreads or any African American hair.”
Until Feb. 28, eight pieces of Thomas’ work can be viewed at Vantage Ventures, on University Avenue.
“We always look for some cool installments to feature here at Vantage,” said Ellie Nesser, program manager. “As soon as she sent us some samples, we knew. I went to her website and just saw a wonderful, talented artist for somebody so young, coming out of WVU.”
Vantage Ventures is an accelerator startup connected with the John Chambers School of Business and Economics, Nesser explained.
Vantage helps entrepreneurs with needed resources, such as physical space, exposure to successful entrepreneurs from West Virginia or functional expertise like lawyers and accountants, Executive Director Sarah Billers said.
“We also recognize the criticality of our entrepreneurs’ understanding firsthand the challenges their solutions are solving for,” Billers said. “This led us to mount Paul Mullin’s seminal artwork on the challenges facing Appalachian men, and now Cydney Thomas on themes of diversity.”
On Black History Month, Thomas said, “Even though Black History Month is only celebrated during Black History Month and they’re trying to like take it out of literally everything, I want everyone to know that it’s still very much a thing and there will be nothing that will take away from everything that Black people or African American people had to go through to get to this place here now.”
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