A St. John daughter is making another major move forward in her career as a visual artist this coming weekend with the opening of her own gallery of "art for the heart and soul" in Oakland, Calif.
Corinne Innis, the daughter of Roy Innis, originally from St. Croix, and Mary Bastian Innis of St. John, has christened her new display space the Chi Gallery, for, she says, it will unite the "God, chi, spirit" elements of her artwork. The opening exhibition will be a solo show of her most recent works that chronicle her spiritual journey over the 10 years that she has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Having grown up on St. John and in New York, where her father was national director of the Congress Of Racial Equality, Innis is an artist whose work represents a blending of her heritages. Although she was born in The Bronx, "my mother returned to St. John with me as a baby," she says. Her local roots include attending kindergarten at the Julius E. Sprauve School and grades 6-10 at Antilles School. Her mother spent her last few years living on St. Thomas, where she was executive director of the Legislature.
Employing bright colors, Innis favors images of the sea and of spirits, often incorporating symbols of the world's religions. She works in a variety of mediums and is known for her expressive facial features "The eyes are the windows of the soul, and buying art or viewing art embraces the soul," she says.
A reception unofficially opening the Chi Gallery will take place on Saturday, March 4. The official grand opening is set for May 6.
Innis notes that the word Chi (pronounced "Chee") has a similar meaning in many societies. In China, it means "life force." In Nigeria, it refers to God. And to some Native Americans, it means "ghost." Innis herself has the nickname "Chi-Chi," given to her as a child by her maternal grandmother, Darcus Flemming Bastian from Tortola.
The gallery, located on Clay Street, will eventually focus on the contemporary art of world cultures, according to a release, but will also sell functional art and rent out framed prints.
Innis currently has work on display in a Pro Arts group show at the Self-Sufficiency Center in Oakland's Eastmont Mall and in the Art of Living Black exhibition at the Richmond Art Center. Through the organization ArtShip, she has a series of pieces titled "Three Sisters" on display in the windows at Jack London Square in Oakland.
A 1985 cultural anthropology graduate of the State University of New York at Purchase, Innis received her multi-subject teaching credential from San Francisco State University in 1994. After teaching art, literature and science to elementary school pupils for several years, she decided in 1997, at the urging of friends, to embark on a career as an artist.
She showed her paintings for the first time that same year, at an exhibition titled "Women from Far Away" at the Gallery of the Ancestors in Berkeley. She has since mainly exhibited through the Pro Arts and Art of Living Black open studios. In 1998 her painting "Orixa and Her Disciples" was reproduced as a poster and postcard for Ishmael Reed's play "Hubba City."
Her three-dimensional work "potted plant" — a live plant in a painted pot — was accepted into a Pro Arts juried exhibition. From 719 works submitted, that piece was one of 12 selected to be in the Pro Arts annual calendar. And last year her "Three Sisters With Boat" was selected to be in a show titled "What We Think of Ourselves" at Oakland's Center for Visual Art.
More of Innis' work may be seen on her web page at http://home.att.net/~chi.art.
