Trustman Art Gallery

Linger & Shift

Julia Shepley with poetry by Audrey Henderson

September 4 - October 1

Opening Reception:
Thursday, September 13, 5-7 p.m.

Artist Talk & Poetry Reading:
Wednesday, September 26, 6 p.m.


Simmons presents artwork and poems resulting from conversations over the past year between multi-media artist Julia Shepley and poet Audrey Henderson. Linger & Shift will be on view from September 4-October 1 in the Trustman Art Gallery, located on the fourth floor, Main College Building, 300 The Fenway in Boston. Henderson’s poems and Shepley’s dimensional drawings, prints and sculpture will be interspersed as a conversation between media throughout the gallery.

Join us in the Gallery for an opening reception on Thursday, September 13, from 5 – 7pm. The Gallery will also host Shepley and Henderson for an artist talk and poetry reading on Wednesday, September 26 at 6pm.

Shepley and Henderson have identified common themes and concerns in their respective work: the significance of early memory as it relates to architecture and architecture as repository of meaning and emotion; the residual energy of inhabited space; and the significance of handcrafted objects as expressions of love and affection. In the dynamic process of passing from one medium to the other, certain shared elements have intensified and accumulated layers of complexity and association.

Julia Shepley will also have on view related sculpture and collaged prints. These explore relocation and resettlement as a universal, physical, and personal part of human history and experience. Each work is delicately layered to create the illusion of depth and a shift of perspective. Shepley highlights the inherent fragility and strength of the materials she works with to reference the winds and tides of human attachment and energy, dispersing, settling and accumulating as they are layered and pieced together by time.

Shepley studied at Hampshire College and Boston University and grew up in Boston, Marshfield, MA, and Sierra Leone, W. Africa. She works out of her studio in the Brickbottom Artist Building in Somerville, MA. Shepley is represented by the Boston Sculptors Gallery; is a member of The Textile Study Group of New York; and is represented in museum, corporate and library collections in Boston and New England. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in museums and galleries and has been reviewed regularly in regional, national and international periodicals.

Henderson graduated from the University of Edinburgh. She has written for BBC Radio Scotland and published a short story “Tales to Tell” in association with a radio series for schools. Her poetry has appeared widely in both the United States and Britain, in Magma, New Writing Scotland, Tar River Poetry and the Midwest Quarterly. She is the recipient of a 2014 Hawthornden Fellowship and was shortlisted for Scotland’s Dr. Gavin Wallace Fellowship. She won second place in the River Styx International Poetry Contest and was a finalist in the Indiana Review ½ K Award as well as being chosen as a Special Merit Poet in the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award Contest. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the Saltire Society’s First Book Award.

Trustman Art Gallery hours are 10 AM – 4:30 PM, Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, 10 AM – 7 PM on Wednesday and Thursday. The gallery is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible. For more information, contact Kyle Mendelsohn at (617) 521-2268 or find us on Instagram.