Sophia Allison

Sophia Allison’s art is inspired by the organic environs of her childhood home in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina and her neighborhood in Los Angeles. Her sculptures and installations reference specific places and points in time, both physical and psychological. 

Her focus is on the common, overlooked everyday aspects of various environments she encounters-from small bits of vegetation, leaves and twigs strewn across the sidewalk during neighborhood walks through Los Feliz, the peeling bark of eucalyptus trees in Brentwood, the view of mountains looming in the distance from her downtown Los Angeles studio or the weathered rural structures in her western North Carolina hometown.

Ranging from site-specific sculptures, to installations and sewn two-dimensional pieces, she creates these works using processes that are methodical, meditative and labor-intensive. Sewing plays a role in the creation of most of her works. She draws with the thread; it is a way of mark-making and building tactile surface textures in addition to acting as a binding element.

The Untitled series of small sewn landscape vignettes reference specific locations on and around her family's property in Western NC. The structures and buildings are in a slow state of degradation while the natural surroundings continue to flourish. Placing a printed digital image on fabric, Sophia repetitively sews through the paper, forcing it into the fibers of the fabric, destroying the paper and recreating the image 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 like a fading memory. These works are displayed so that both the front and back sides are visible.

Sophia's goal is to cause viewers to pause and notice the mundane in the environments they pass through, notice the bits of unexpected beauty that sometimes go undetected through their lives.