Presented as part of CCA's Ceramics Lecture Series
Treadwell Ceramic Arts Center, Oakland campus
John Roloff is a visual artist who works conceptually with site, process, and natural systems. He is known primarily for his outdoor kiln/furnace projects of the late 1970s to the early 1990s as well as other large-scale environmental and gallery installations investigating geologic and natural phenomena. Based on a background in science, his work engages poetic and site-specific relationships among material, concept, and performance in the domains of geology, ecology, architecture, ceramics, industry, mining, metabolic systems, and history.
Roloff studied geology at UC Davis with Eldridge Moores and others during the formative days of plate tectonics in the mid-1960s. Subsequently he studied art with Robert Arneson and William T. Wiley (also at UC Davis). In addition to numerous environmental, site-specific installations in the United States, Canada, and Europe, his work has been included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Institution, Photoscene Cologne, the Venice Architectural and Art Biennale, and most recently the Snow Show in Kemi, Finland. He has received three visual arts fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, a California Arts Council grant for visual artists, and a Bernard Osher Fellowship at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. He is represented by Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco.
