American, b. 1972
Lives and works in Berkeley, CA
Lena Wolff is an interdisciplinary visual artist, craftswoman and activist for democracy. Working with tactile processes in a wide range of material approaches, her practice extends out of American folk art traditions while at the same time being connected to minimalism, geometric abstraction, Op art, social practice, feminist and political art. Her broad but interconnected artistic output includes drawing, collage, sculpture, text-based works, performance, music, and public projects.
For several years, Wolff has been exploring an interdisciplinary series works of rooted in the visual iconography of American quilts, including line drawings, collages of hand-cut and painted papers, wood sculpture, concrete, embroidery, and public projects. Combining known and obscure quilt patterns with symbols for social justice, motifs from nature, and the larger universe, the artist taps into a shared visual language that embodies collective imagination as much as individual ingenuity. In mining the archives of American craft traditions, Wolff connects to a lineage of makers and participates in an artform that is emblematic of the national ideals of democracy—while positing a vision of a more just future.
Wolff’s work has been presented in museums including the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco, CA; Berkeley Art Museum, CA; Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA; Headlands Center for the Arts, Marin, CA; and Mathis Art Gallery at University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, WI. Her work is in the public collections of the Berkeley Art Museum, CA; Cleveland Clinic, OH; Oakland Museum of California, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA; and University of Iowa Museum, Iowa City, IA, among others. In addition, she has generated several projects that contribute to public dialog and civic engagement, including a widespread anti-hate poster campaign and a national public art initiative to boost voter participation.
Photo: Elise Morris
