Sophia Ainslie: Inside Out 2
Beverly, MA -- The Walter J. Manninen Center for the Arts at Endicott College is pleased to announce their first exhibition of the fall 2012 semester. Inside Out 2, the solo exhibit by Sophia Ainslie will be located in the Carol Grillo Gallery, Manninen Center for the Arts, Endicott College, 376 Hale Street, Beverly from Thursday, August 23, through Saturday, October 20, 2012. Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. The reception for this exhibition is Thursday, October 4, from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public.
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Sophia Ainslie has a B.F.A. from the University of South Africa and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts, in Boston, enabled by the sponsorship of her patron Henny Kirshon, and the Art History Department at Tufts. She is also the recipient of the Anne and Graham Gund award to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, in Maine. Sophia has held solo and group shows in Southern Africa, Europe, and the United States and has participated in residencies such as, Triangle, in NY; Gasworks, in London; Thapong, in Botswana; Thupelo, in Cape Town.
Ms. Ainslie has has lectured in Southern Africa at the Johannesburg Art Foundation, the South African National Museum, in Cape Town, and the Gaborone Museum of Art, in Botswana.
In this solo exhibition: Inside Out 2, Ms. Ainslie’s work combines x-rays, territorial mappings and sketching reflecting the relationship between the body and landscape. The colors used in this series come from her mother’s clothes and jewelry, the interior of her house, even its surrounding landscape. The exhibit includes four large scale drawings and one 16’ X 14’ site-specific mural to be created by Sophia during the first few weeks of the exhibition along with the Fine Art Students from the School of Visual and Performing Arts at Endicott.
When talking about her work Ainslie states “Our bodies have become fragmented, in the same manner as the landscape we live in. Social, medical, and memory systems become more specialized, and as they do, our focus becomes more compartmentalized. My work fragments and traces the interior of the body combined with topographic maps, and tiny areas of photographs and sketches made while in my surrounding landscape.”
“Working with brushed India ink and flat colors of acrylic paint, I’m interested in portraying a collage-like space created from looking at the body and land as parallel environments. I hope to portray a sense of coexisting disconnection that talks about our fragmented experience within these environments”.
According to Kathleen Moore, Endicott’s Coordinator of Visual Arts, this is the first exhibition of the fall 2012 semester, and the college believes that Sophia’s expressive large scale drawings will elicit student response and create dialogue among themselves and their professors in the gallery as well as in class. Students from the Fine Arts programs will be chosen to work alongside the artist as she creates the site specific mural. Engaging the student with the artist will give them a greater appreciation of work large scale as well as hands on experience learning new techniques and allowing them to think about their own work and how an artist draws on personal experiences to create, as in Ms. Ainslie’s case, her mother’s x-rays.
Inside Out 2 has been made possible with support from the Lion’s Pride Foundation and the van Otterloo Family Foundation.
If you have any questions regarding Inside Out 2, or any of the programming related to this exhibition, please contact Kathleen Moore at 978-232-2655 or kmoore@endicott.edu. Our website is: www.endicott.edu/centerforthearts for further information on future exhibits and lecture opportunities.