Rising Stars: Meet Barbara Tharas

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Barbara Tharas.

Hi Barbara, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I am an artist living and working in Emporia, Kansas. I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts from Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in 2016 and am currently an MFA candidate at the University of Kansas.

I have exhibited nationally over the last eight years, including eight solo exhibitions and numerous juried exhibitions. I create work that is motivated through sequences such as comics, animation, and printmaking.

I use printmaking and comic-ing as a way to create work that utilizes humor to critique anti-fat bias, stigmas of mental illness, and conventional beauty standards, as well as celebrating queerness and my Mexican Heritage. Laughter is my most significant motivation when creating art. My mission is to draw and share what I draw with as many folx as possible.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Since being in Kansas it has been a very smooth road, however, in Texas it was not. I grew up in the small town of Ingleside, Texas. As soon as I graduated from high school my dad disowned me and kicked me out of my childhood home because he didn’t like my partner at the time. I was forced to go live with my partner’s family which was broken and dysfunctional.

They lived in a trailer with holes in the floor and curtains for doors, and it reeked of animals they couldn’t keep up with. My partner’s parents were abusive alcoholics. Luckily, the stepdad never talked badly to me or laid a hand on me, but he was awful to my partner and his little brother. My partner and I had talked about getting married and building a life together, but the moment he and his bandmates decided to move to Austin, he broke up with me.

I was devastated, and I entered into a new world of depression. I moved out of the trailer and back into my parents’ home. My childhood house never felt like home again after being kicked out – it was just a place to crash from then on.

I entered college at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, and I thrived in my first semester. I earned straight As and was accepted into the honors program. But by the time the second semester hit, the major depression took over, and I couldn’t keep up with anything. I remember seeing a counselor at the college, and he told me to call my dad and pray to God. It didn’t help. It took me nine tumultuous years to graduate with my BFA. I fought tooth and nail for that degree, and I barely made it out.

Each semester got harder and harder to keep up with. I couldn’t fall asleep at a decent time, I had continuous tornado night terrors, and I would sleep through alarms. I would rarely make it to class on time. I changed my major about ten times, and I just couldn’t make anything stick. Finally, I asked myself, “What have I always been naturally good at? What has always brought me joy?”

And the answer was making art. I decided to enroll in the art program. My dad berated me for pursuing art as a career. He called me a cunt and told me that art was for rich snobs and that I would never make any money. But I pursued it anyway. I moved to my Grandma’s house, which was packed with my Aunt, three of her kids, and my uncle, who was going through a divorce, and his three kids. I slept on my cousin’s bedroom floor.

About halfway through my art degree, I started talking to my ex again. He convinced me to go visit him in Austin. I drove my grandma’s car to Austin, and I felt hopeful. I decided that Austin had more to offer me and that I would quit college at TAMUCC to work full time as a night stocker at Walmart in order to save up money to move to Austin to finish my art degree and live with my ex. So, I went back to my grandma’s house and did just that. Working at Walmart was the worst job I ever had.

The building was really hot at night. The lights were a sweltering blue hell, and the floor was hard to stand on for eight hours straight. I worked with some people whose lives were much harder than mine. Working at night and sleeping on my grandma’s couch during the day did not help my depression. One day, I was looking at my ex’s Facebook and noticed he was flirting with his ex. I called the whole thing off and reached a new low. I started drinking, having risky sex, and doing cocaine once with a coworker. Finally, I abandoned my job at Walmart and re-enrolled at TAMUCC.

While I was working at Walmart, there was something really special that brought me joy. That joy was when I would come home to my grandma’s couch, I would watch clips of Adventure Time on my phone over and over. The humor, the art, the cleverness of the animation would spark so much joy in my brain. I started deep – diving all of the artists who made Adventure Time and learning about storyboarding. It somehow made me feel less alone in a profound way.

I decided I wanted to do that for other people in the same way. One night, my cousin Franklin and my brother Nathan were walking along the road, and I asked them, “Do y’all think I should pursue making a cartoon?” And without hesitation, they both said, “Yes!”. From then on, it has been a goal of mine to make a cartoon that helps other people the way Adventure Time helped me. Franklin and Nathan’s belief in me gave me the push I needed to go back to TAMUCC to pursue an art degree with the intention of making a cartoon.

Re-enrolling at TAMUCC, I started taking art classes, and when I took my first printmaking class, I fell in love with the processes and the community. I made prints in my own cartoony style and received lots of support and encouragement for having a unique, identifiable style so early in my career. The same thing happened when I took painting classes and painted myself in an Adventure Time-influenced way. However, painting didn’t have the community that printmaking did. Since TAMUCC did not offer a cartoon or animation focus, I chose to focus on printmaking.

I fell in love with it more and more. I graduated in 2016, and eight years later, I am now enrolled in grad school at the University of Kansas, where I will earn my Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking. The great thing about the KU graduate studies program is that it is very interdisciplinary, and I will be encouraged to explore different mediums, including animation! Like I said, my life has been wonderful since moving to Kansas. I honestly owe all of my success to my loving partners. They are my whole world.

After graduating with my BFA from TAMUCC, I experienced some major struggles. I became roommates with a violent alcoholic in Corpus Christi. One night, he threw my printer across the living room while yelling in my face. So, I walked out of the apartment, went to my parent’s house, and never went back. I then entered a relationship with a woman and started to live with her at her parents’ house.

It was weird to live at her parents’ house and sleep in their spare bedroom. When our relationship ended, I was suicidal, and she drove me to the emergency room, where I self-harmed and was taken to a psychiatric hospital. I stayed there and was treated for major depression for two weeks. The help and care I received from that facility were extremely effective, and I will never forget it.

After leaving the psychiatric hospital, I went back to live with my grandma, aunt, and cousins. There, my cousins started telling me stories about the man their older sister is married to. His name is Roland Garza, and the family found out she was pregnant with his child when she was seventeen. He was forty-two. She and I are the same age, so I found out when I was also seventeen. I didn’t understand what pedophilia was at the time, and I didn’t learn what grooming was until I was thirty.

My cousins told me stories of him grooming their sister since she was twelve and the physical and emotional violence, he would put them through while he was grooming her. He is a bad man, and the adults in our family let him do whatever he wants. To this day, he does whatever he wants. But when I started learning about grooming and hearing the stories my cousins were telling about their trauma with him, I started to get angry.

One day, I was driving down my grandma’s street. I saw Roland pull up to a stop sign, and I flicked him off. My aunt kicked me out of my grandma’s house because she didn’t like my hostile behavior toward the pedophile, and I had to go back to my parent’s house in an isolated town.

From there, my cousin Mely and I got an apartment in Corpus Christi. I got a job at a local coffee shop, working full-time to pay rent and groceries. I also worked part-time at the Art Museum of South Texas. My dad took the car away, so I had to ride my bicycle or use Lyft/Uber to get anywhere. It was really hard having to ride my bicycle eighteen-plus miles every day through a city that is not bicycle-friendly. I rarely had the money for Lyft/Uber. I lived in a perpetual state of sweat. Shortly after moving in together and feeling like it was all working out, Mely decided to quit her job.

She didn’t look for a new one. Instead, she slowly came around the apartment less and less, and items started to disappear from the kitchen. Finally, she told me she was moving back in with her mom and that I should go back to living with my parents. This shattered our relationship, and I did everything I could to look for another roommate to keep my lease going. I didn’t want to leave everything I had worked for. However, no one was available to book a room with me. I decided to move to Kansas with my best friends, and my life has been blossoming ever since.

While all of those hardships after graduating were happening, I was still making and exhibiting art. I was resourceful with my materials, using scrap wood, wall paint, and collage materials to create pieces. I exhibited “Seattle’s Hike” at K Space Art Gallery, “April Showers” at Greenlight Coffee Shop, and “Garen and Friends” at a local space in downtown Corpus Christi.

I even did a visiting artist gig at West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV. All of those opportunities were made possible because of meaningful friendships and connections I had made with different people throughout my undergraduate studies.

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am most proud of my ability to take my life struggles and turn them into stories the way I did with Garen’s Diary Vol. I & II. In this graphic novel zine, Garen is the main character and represents my past life in Corpus Christi.

In Corpus Christi, I was always in survival mode, barely scraping by, being hit with major obstacle after major obstacle without any real sense of stability. I was untreated for Borderline Personality Disorder (I wasn’t diagnosed and treated until moving to Kansas), and that was incredibly isolating. According to the Mayo Clinic:

“Borderline personality disorder is a mental health condition that affects the way people feel about themselves and others, making it hard to function in everyday life. It includes a pattern of unstable, intense relationships, as well as impulsiveness and an unhealthy way of seeing themselves. Impulsiveness involves having extreme emotions and acting or doing things without thinking about them first. People with borderline personality disorder have a strong fear of abandonment or being left alone. Even though they want to have loved and lasting relationships, the fear of being abandoned often leads to mood swings and anger. It also leads to impulsiveness and self-injury that may push others away. Borderline personality disorder usually begins in early adulthood. The condition is most serious in young adulthood. Mood swings, anger, and impulsiveness often get better with age. But the main issues of self-image and fear of being abandoned, as well as relationship issues, go on. If you have borderline personality disorder, know that many people with this condition get better with treatment. They can learn to live stabler, more fulfilling lives.”

I relate to Mayo Clinic’s description word for word. And like it says, with treatment, I am currently living a stable, fulfilling life that I am so incredibly grateful for. The fear of abandonment is still there, but it’s much quieter and completely manageable.

So, back to Garen: Deep in the woods of an abandoned superfund site lives Garen, a gender-nonconforming feral survivor. They have isolated themselves from society, except when they roller skates through the city to dumpster dive for food and objects. Garen is emotionally guarded but has learned resilience through an unconventional lifestyle with the help of their chosen family, the park raccoons.

Garen will have to learn to open up in order to repair their ability to trust others, as well as themself. On one of their trips into the city, they encounter a puppet named Dolly, who they befriend. Dolly accompanies Garen and becomes a witness to their sacred diary, which holds secrets about their painful family history. Upon awakening one morning, Garen and Dolly discover that the diary has been stolen. Garen will have to relearn how to trust those closest to them in order to solve the mystery of the missing diary.

Garen’s Diary is a journey of overcoming trauma, reestablishing trust, and learning self-compassion. In January of 2021, I exhibited a show called “Garen’s Diary” at a local gallery called Trox Gallery. This collection of paintings, prints, and sculptures was based on this sequential narrative which is represented as several volumes of zines. Garen’s Diary is intended to allow the viewer to experience enough solidarity, compassion, and empathy to find humor in trauma as a means to heal.

You can read Garen’s Diary Volumes I & II on my website here: https://www.barbaralanetharas.com/garens-diary

Currently, I am working on a graphic novel zine called “A Girl Named Seattle.” Seattle is the villain in “Garen’s Diary,” and she is a little girl who lives in a small Catholic town in Washington state. Her parents named her Seattle because they met in the city of Seattle. They are self-absorbed parents who care most about their reputations and affluence.

Seattle represents my BPD. She is impulsive and angry and feels intense emotions all the time. I took a story writing class via the Lawrence Art Center with Jason Baltazar, and in that class, I wrote the story “A Girl Named Seattle.” I am currently in the process of converting it into a graphic novel that I will print and distribute as a zine.

In January of 2023, I exhibited a show centering on the story of Seattle. It consisted of paintings, cyanotypes, soft sculptures, screenprint installations, and an animated GIF. It will also be exhibiting at the Kansas City Artist Coalition in September 2024. The exhibition, “A Girl Named Seattle,” is meant to share my own experience of having Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) with the hope of creating solidarity and understanding among viewers.

The formal elements used throughout the show echo characteristics of BPD, such as the relentless repetition of thought loops, the size and intense denseness of emotions, the multimedia flux of self-identity, the attempt of enclosed, finite containment of infinite, erratic, ever-moving parts, ultimately forcing perpetual forgetfulness and compartmentalization.

Finally, it takes time and effort to read through the graphic novel zine in order to learn more about the main character. By doing this, the viewer can find resolve in her story, which is representative of the constant work it takes to live inside a body that operates among the symptoms of BPD.

You can read the in-progress graphic novel zine on my website here: https://www.barbaralanetharas.com/a-girl-named-seattle.

This mode of taking my life experiences and converting them into characters and stories and using them to create exhibitions and graphic novel zines is what I am most proud of. This formula is extremely rewarding, though it is a lot of work. I want to use this formula throughout grad school to study my Mexican Heritage and queerness more closely as well.

Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs, or other resources you think our readers should check?
Here is a list of my favorite podcasts:
1. “Why Won’t You Date Me” by Nicole Byer.
2. “Best Friends” by Nicole Byer and Sasheer Zamata.
3. “This American Life” hosted by Ira Glass.
4. “Maintenance Phase” by Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes.
5. “She’s All Fat” by April Korto Quioh and Sophia Carter-Kahn.

My favorite app is Instagram. You can follow me at @bltcomicz.

My favorite books are:
1. “Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia” by Sabrina Strings.
2. “Hunger” by Roxane Gay.
3. “The Body Is Not an Apology” by Sonya Renee Taylor.
4. “Heavy: An American Memoir” by Kiese Laymon.
5. “You Just Need to Lose Weight” by Aubrey Gordon.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.barbaralanetharas.com/
• Instagram: @bltcomicz
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-lane-tharas-a92237309