I am very excited to announce my upcoming solo exhibition, Friend Among Strangers, opening at the end of this month at Brevard College!  Please see below for details, and if you are in the area, I hope you can attend the reception.

Mountainscape3, acrylic and grit on watercolor paper, 2012

Friend Among Strangers

Sophia Allison

August 31– September 29, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday, August 31, 5:30pm

Brevard College

Art Department

Spiers Gallery

1 Brevard Drive

Brevard, NC 28712

Gallery hours: Mon. - Fri., 8:00a.m.-3:00p.m.

Brevard College Art Department is proud to present a solo exhibition by North Carolina native Sophia Allison. In Friend Among Strangers the Los Angeles-based, multi-media artist offers an autobiography of sewn landscapes, works on paper and sculpture which culminate into an installation addressing ideas concerning the emotional connections to one’s own past, the fragmentation of memories and the experiences that meld it all together.

For this exhibition the artist presents work directly connected to and inspired by the organic surroundings of her childhood home in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

In her sewn pictorials, Allison places a printed image on fabric and repetitively sews through the paper, forcing it into the cloth fibers while simultaneously destroying the paper. Parts of the image are recreated with thread on the opposite side of the material. The effect is two-fold: on one side, the landscape is clearly articulated; on the other, the paper image is obliterated, leaving loose threads and uneven textures. The image is simultaneously destroyed and built up; it is recognized as a snapshot of a specific location and at the same time it becomes fragmented and abstracted.

Allison's room-size installation contains a small house sculpture made of cardboard and recycled materials. The house references a gatehouse on her family's property that has fallen into disrepair. This sculpture is situated within a larger installation of thousands of hand cut paper floral pieces that reference local landscape as well as the landscape from her Los Angeles neighborhood.

Her recent works on paper are collaged abstracted landscapes. The forms within these pieces undulate and flow, creating movement in the images. The works are created from Allison's memory of the local physical terrain.

Friend Among Strangers situates the viewer directly within the enveloping environment of the creative mind. The use of carefully selected, tactile material and the physical consequences of the artist’s solitary intentions transform commonplace and discarded detritus into re-born objects of contemplation, recollection and redemption.

For more information, please contact Diane Pomphrey, at 828.884.8188 or email at pomphrdj.@brevard.edu. Visit www.brevard.edu/art or www.sophiaallison.com