Opening Reception: Thursday, October 27, 5 – 7:30 p.m., with a gallery talk at 6 p.m.

Magnolia Laurie of Baltimore, a 2015 Sondheim Prize finalist, exhibits her paintings and installations.

She said, “Within my paintings and installations, the structures and systems created are illogical; they are delicate and makeshift in a way that may not endure their own weight, let alone the impending disruptions. Yet, they are made, and to me they reference the sustained need to try, to build, to create, even in the face of complete futility. They depict the instinctive, sometimes manic, and desperate human act of building and within them I am thinking about the cyclical rise and fall of civilizations.”

An assistant professor at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., Laurie was born in Massachusetts and raised in Puerto Rico. She received her bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Mount Royal School of Art at Maryland Institute College of Art. Her recent exhibitions include “LANDMARK” at frosch and portmann in New York, “with a tug and a hold” at VisArts in Rockville, Md., and the 2015 Sondheim Artscape Finalist Exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. http://www.magnolialaurie.com