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Sophia Ainslie
Photo: Matthew Healey

X-Ray Vision In a Mural

In Tufts’ new Collaborative Learning and Innovation Complex—designed to encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration—even the mural covering the four-story open stairwell is a merger of science and art. In Person 574, named after the building at 574 Boston Avenue, was inspired by an x-ray that revealed the artist’s mother had cancer. The muralist, Sophia Ainslie, G01, got the idea the moment she saw her mother’s x-ray. “So many thoughts were going through my mind,” she recalls. “I remember saying to my mother, ‘I’m going to make a portrait of you from the inside.’”
Ainslie, a South African transplant whose father was an abstract painter, is a graduate of Tufts’ partnership with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) and now a Northeastern University lecturer. The mural, consisting of seven large-scale vinyl prints, was made possible by Joan M. Henricks, J69, and her husband, Alan. The couple established a fund that allows Tufts to purchase new work from emerging artists who have graduated from Tufts.

Henricks went on to earn a doctorate in public health, but has sustained a lifelong passion for art since taking studio art classes at the SMFA while an undergraduate. It’s a fascination she has shared with others as a docent and guide at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

When she first encountered Ainslie’s work, Henricks was astonished by what she saw. Ainslie “was able to look at microscopic cells and blow them up into incredible macroscopic works,” Henricks says. “I thought her artwork would be compelling to a large audience of any age. We are delighted to support an artist who has clearly developed an original voice.”

In Person 574 combines vivid organic forms with heavy dark lines that evoke the landscape of Ainslie’s native South Africa. “I hope this work will create a sense of wonderment and pique the imagination,” she says.

LAURA FERGUSON

 
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