Gallery Artists: Sophia Ainslie

SophiaArts@aol.com

Ainslie’s continued interest in recycling has taken her from the world of mechanical recycling of human detritus to the process of recycling in nature, the underground burrows of the earth. “The land has associations of stability, endurance and strength,” says Ainslie. “The earthworms that of farming and fostering, moving through the earth by means of recycling, creating nutrients as the dirt passes through them. Time and space becomes endless as the earth and worms work together toward regeneration. I become the earthworm in my process and material. Drawing, erasing and redrawing. Leaving traces of the past mark and creating surfaces of history and time. Cutting, composing and decomposing.”

Sophia’s current collage’s, which she maps together with pins, celebrates the land as a continuous recycler, the compost site of memory and time. She utilizes the language of drawing and the idea of recycling as a means to understand and communicate ideas about constructed and deconstructed memory and fragmentation.

Sophia Ainslie, born in South Africa, arrived in Boston in 1998 to pursue her Graduate studies. She holds 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. After graduating she received the Anne and Graham Gund award to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, in Maine. She has had solo exhibitions at Hallspace (Boston); the Gasworks Gallery (London) and the Goodman Gallery (Johannesburg). She has had her work in group exhibitions locally and abroad. She currently lives in Boston.

Crawlers 4
2006
materials: mapping pins, digital prints, charcoal & acrylic on paper
dimensions: 10'H x 30'W (dimensions variable)

Crawlers 6A (detail)
2006
materials: mapping pins, acrylic, charcoal on billboard & paper
dimensions: 10'H x 80'W (dimensions variable)

Crawlers 6B (detail)
2006
materials: mapping pins, digital prints, astro-turf, acrylic, charcoal on paper
dimensions: 10'H x 80'W (dimensions variable)

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