Sophie Docalavich
Emerging artist exploring the relationship between nature, place, and community
Selected Works
A curated display of my latest projects. My work is rooted in observation, emotional connection to animals, and interest in how natural life persists within spaces shaped by human culture, memory, and social experience. (Click on the main image to see an expanded gallery.)
About Sophie
Sophie Docalavich is a senior Studio Art major at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina. Her work explores the relationship between nature, place, and communtiy. Working across drawing, painting, and mixed media, she focuses on themes of adaptation, resilience, and belonging.
In the summer of 2025, Sophie studied abroad in Venice, Italy through the Boston University Summer Study Abroad Program on scholarship. Her time in Venice strongly influenced her developing body of work, inspiring a series of paintings examining coexistence between urban environments, tourism, wildlife, and the natural world.
Prior to attending college, Sophie was homeschooled and spent many years volunteering at the Stanley Arts Center in Hampton, South Carolina, where she assisted with arts programming and the curation and installation of exhibitions. She spent last summer teaching visual art at a summer arts program for low-income students at Camp Wildwood and began an ongoing internship in fine art conservation under the instruction of Dimitri Nedelcu at Universal Fine Art Conservation in Estill, South Carolina.
As an artist, she values opportunities for cultural exchange and deep engagement with place. She was recently selected for a December 2026 residency at Château de Cerisay in the countryside of western France through Atelier Artists in Residence. The residency will give her time to develop new work that builds on her interest in the relationship between people and place, informed by her experiences in communities at home and abroad.
Sophie is currently developing her senior capstone exhibition, reflecting on growing up in rural South Carolina and how her creativity, daydreaming, connection to animals helped her to navigate childhood poverty, trauma, and isolation with resilience.