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 an artist, craftswoman, and activist for democracy in equal parts. Her work extends out of American quiltmaking traditions while at the same time being rooted in minimalism, geometric abstraction, Op art, social practice, feminist and political art. Wolff’s interconnected artistic output includes drawing, collage, sculpture, frequent collaboration, and public projects. Her work is in the permanent collections of ONE National Lesbian and Gay Archives, the Berkeley Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Oakland Museum of California, among others. She lives with her wife, artist Miriam Klein Stahl and their daughter in Berkeley, California.