(Susan Rankaitis, CT #26, 2012. Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery)
Scripps College art professor Susan Rankaitis recently exhibited her photography at Robert Mann Gallery in New York City, garnering an insightful and complimentary review in Photogmag.com for her first solo show in 10 years. Rankaitis’ work in the Grey Matters series allowed her to expand on her fascination with interoception, a neuroscientific term that describes the mind’s perception of the physical body. The mixed media images she creates are both cerebral and emotionally evocative. Rankaitis shared the news of the art review as she completes a year-long sabbatical, reporting back to the Scripps community, too, that many New York area alums attended the gallery opening. Rankaitis, who serves as Fletcher Jones Chair in Studio Art at Scripps, has announced her two-year transition to retirement from teaching in 2019. She maintains an active focus on her vital 35-year art career, with her pieces in LACMA’s permanent collections contributing to this summer’s Los Angeles-based Light Play show, a complementary exhibition to the works of pioneering artist László Moholy-Nagy’s (1895–1946). Rankaitis has said that it was Moholy-Nagy whose important and diverse body of work originally inspired her to become an artist, and who influenced her life’s exploration of the interrelatedness of life, art, and technology as well as her own experimental methods for producing abstract and conceptual artworks related both to painting and photography.