2025 Summer Workshop Program

Lena Wolff Color Lab June 29 to July 4, 2025 Time 9 am - 12 pm Discipline: Multimedia Open To All On-site Housing NOT Available - Off-site Housing Options

This workshop is designed for anyone interested in working with color in new ways, for absolute beginners to practicing artists, designers, and craftspeople alike. The workshop covers the basics of color theory taught through hands-on practice, walking through a sequence of fun, approachable paint-mixing and collage exercises. The early part of the week focuses on generating a collection of color charts using gouache, an opaque, water-based variant of watercolor. These foundational explorations demonstrate a range of nuanced color themes, followed by the creation of a series of small, related collages that offer opportunities to experiment and improvise based on individual inclinations. Alongside art activities, slideshows will be presented with visual examples on the biology of color vision, a breakdown of color properties, and the wondrous phenomenon of color relativity, with examples from early color theorists, textiles, folk-art, and work by contemporary artists. By the end of the workshop, everyone will leave with a small set of color charts and collages, and fodder for a lifetime of future experimentation.

Biography

Lena Wolff is a visual artist, craftswoman and activist for democracy who has lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area since the early 1990’s. Her work extends out of American folk-art traditions while also being connected histories of minimalism, geometric abstraction, Op art, social practice, handcraft, and feminist and political art. Her broad interconnected artistic output includes drawing, collage, sculpture, text-based works, frequent collaboration, and public projects. In recent years, she generated several projects to contribute to civic engagement, including a widespread anti-hate campaign and a national public art initiative to boost voter participation that circulated in the US in 2018, 2020 and 2022. Her work has been widely exhibited and collected by ONE National Lesbian and Gay Archives at USC, the Berkeley Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Oakland Museum of California, among others. Lena’s work can be found at Sarah Shepard Gallery in Larkspur, Haines Gallery in San Francisco, and in public spaces across the United States. She lives with her wife, artist, teacher, and illustrator, Miriam Klein Stahl and their daughter in Berkeley, California.