Illuminating Stories

Due to the COVID lockdown, Sophia Lennox ’24 spent her first year as a Washington College student online and at home. So, when the College returned to in-person instruction, she set out to be as involved as possible on campus. What followed was a journey of self-discovery, on which she changed her major several times, chronically said yes to things, and got involved in everything from honors societies to art clubs.

By the end of this journey, Lennox not only completed double majors in history and art history, as well as minors in gender studies and museum, field, and community education, but she was also on the executive boards of several clubs and was very involved in the local community. “At first, it was ‘try everything,’” she said. “Later, I only kept up with those things that were meaningful to me and my experience.”

Two of those things were her love of history and art. From the get-go, Lennox wanted to study history, but it wasn’t until art history professor Ben Tilghman pushed
her to combine it with her passion for art that Lennox found her true calling.

Her relationship with art was not a typical one—while other students looked to create art, Lennox looked to understand it, and Tilghman encouraged her to pursue this through art history. Lennox was particularly fascinated by the stories that pieces of art tell and wanted to not only understand art but also help people around her understand it. “When I hear a story that resonates with me, I love sharing it. And I want people to enjoy these things the way I do.”

Lennox gave the example of Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), a piece of art that is so significant to her that she has it tattooed on her arm . The original, by Félix González-Torres, is a pile of 175 pounds of candy spilled in the corner of a room, representing the weight of Ross Laycock, his partner, before he was diagnosed with AIDS. This story, which gives the art piece another layer of meaning, really spoke to Lennox. “I could go and buy candy at the store right now and pour it into the corner of the room. But it’s not the same without that genuine story,” she said. “In a way, there’s a high entry bar; you need to know the story. I want to work towards lowering that bar of entry.”

For her art history thesis, Lennox discussed another piece that has a lot of meaning to her, Strange Fruit by Zoe Leonard. The artist, after losing a close friend and taking a five-year break from activism, began to sew every piece of fruit she ate back together. The resulting art piece consists of fruit peels from avocados, oranges, bananas, grapefruits, and lemons sewn back together and displayed scattered across a room. According to Lennox, it is performance art and intended to be walked through by the gallery audience. The fruit, naturally, decayed and was occasionally stepped on by viewers, all of which were part of the performance. This decaying and disintegrating fruit represents time passing since the loss of her friend.

As part of her thesis, Lennox decided to recreate Strange Fruit. “Every time I threw away a banana peel or an orange, I felt guilty. Like this was an opportunity to relate and connect with the piece that I’m missing,” she explained. Despite being much more technically difficult than expected, doing this was a great way for her to understand the art she studied.

Like her focus on storytelling in art, Lennox explored the stories of the AIDS crisis in her history thesis. She describes the AIDS crisis as in a strange place where it is history but also not history. “There are people today who are HIV positive, who lived during the AIDS crisis,” she said. “It’s still very much part of their daily lives and lived experience.” Her history paper argues that if you label AIDS as history, you’re ignoring a whole group of people who still live with it.

With both of her theses completed and a new chapter of her life on the horizon, Lennox looks back on her time as a student fondly. “I think I’m at the point where I’m ready to move on. I have that support from my professors, and I’m ready for that next step. I think I’ve done almost everything I’ve wanted to do in college,” she said.