Lena Wolff Toward The Light (HOPE) #1, 2025
Collage with hand-cut paper
18" H x 18" W (artwork size)
Featured in We Belong to Each Other
A solo show of drawings, collages, and works in concrete
Erica Tanov Atelier, Fall 2025
About the Exhibition
Across decades of practice, the iconography and underlying geometries of American quilt patterns have evolved into a central focus of Lena’s studio work. She interprets these forms—shared through centuries, often between women and across communities—as conduits that bind past and future, personal and political. We Belong To Each Other brings together new and earlier works that center these enduring motifs of interconnection through a wide range of material explorations.
For this exhibition, presented on the occasion of her new textile collaboration with Erica Tanov, Lena debuts a series of paper relief collages that concentrate on circular forms—abstractions distilled to essential shapes that express both the cyclical nature of existence and the relational forces that structure our world. Alongside her white-on-white semi-sculptural collages, two new works composed entirely in black expand this exploration, offering a tonal inversion that amplifies the geometry and depth of the compositions.
In addition to drawings and collages that engage the hidden frameworks of quilt patterns, the centerpiece of the show, A Welcoming, features twelve cast-concrete symbols referencing social justice movements, queer culture, scientific research, and traditional quilt forms. When assembled together, these symbols create a visual grammar—a call and response—whose layered narratives illuminate the fundamental state of interdependence that permeates our universe.
About the Artist
Lena Wolff is an artist, craftswoman, and activist for democracy who has been based in the San Francisco Bay Area since the early 1990s. Her work extends from American folk-art traditions while remaining deeply rooted in minimalism, geometric abstraction, Op art, social practice, and feminist art. Lena’s broad and interconnected practice spans drawing, collage, sculpture, text-based works, frequent collaboration, and public projects.
In 2017, she formed Art for Democracy, beginning with an anti-hate poster in the Bay Area, followed by a national public art campaign designed to boost voter participation. Over the last two decades, her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the country and collected by ONE National Lesbian and Gay Archives, Berkeley Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Oakland Museum of California, San Francisco Arts Commission, Alameda County Arts Commission, Cleveland Clinic, University of Iowa Museum, and the Zuckerman Museum of Art, among others. She lives with her wife—artist, teacher, and illustrator Miriam Klein Stahl—and their daughter in Berkeley, California. In recognition of their work merging art and civic engagement, November 12th was declared “Miriam Klein Stahl and Lena Wolff Day” in the City of Berkeley in 2019.
Lena and Erica first collaborated in 2014, a partnership grounded in shared values of craftsmanship, material exploration, and enduring beauty. Eleven years later, this exhibition marks their return to one another with a new limited-edition collaborative collection, released alongside We Belong to Each Other and celebrating a renewed creative dialogue.
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Collage with hand-cut paper
18" H x 18" W (artwork size)
Featured in We Belong to Each Other
A solo show of drawings, collages, and works in concrete
Erica Tanov Atelier, Fall 2025
About the Exhibition
Across decades of practice, the iconography and underlying geometries of American quilt patterns have evolved into a central focus of Lena’s studio work. She interprets these forms—shared through centuries, often between women and across communities—as conduits that bind past and future, personal and political. We Belong To Each Other brings together new and earlier works that center these enduring motifs of interconnection through a wide range of material explorations.
For this exhibition, presented on the occasion of her new textile collaboration with Erica Tanov, Lena debuts a series of paper relief collages that concentrate on circular forms—abstractions distilled to essential shapes that express both the cyclical nature of existence and the relational forces that structure our world. Alongside her white-on-white semi-sculptural collages, two new works composed entirely in black expand this exploration, offering a tonal inversion that amplifies the geometry and depth of the compositions.
In addition to drawings and collages that engage the hidden frameworks of quilt patterns, the centerpiece of the show, A Welcoming, features twelve cast-concrete symbols referencing social justice movements, queer culture, scientific research, and traditional quilt forms. When assembled together, these symbols create a visual grammar—a call and response—whose layered narratives illuminate the fundamental state of interdependence that permeates our universe.
About the Artist
Lena Wolff is an artist, craftswoman, and activist for democracy who has been based in the San Francisco Bay Area since the early 1990s. Her work extends from American folk-art traditions while remaining deeply rooted in minimalism, geometric abstraction, Op art, social practice, and feminist art. Lena’s broad and interconnected practice spans drawing, collage, sculpture, text-based works, frequent collaboration, and public projects.
In 2017, she formed Art for Democracy, beginning with an anti-hate poster in the Bay Area, followed by a national public art campaign designed to boost voter participation. Over the last two decades, her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the country and collected by ONE National Lesbian and Gay Archives, Berkeley Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Oakland Museum of California, San Francisco Arts Commission, Alameda County Arts Commission, Cleveland Clinic, University of Iowa Museum, and the Zuckerman Museum of Art, among others. She lives with her wife—artist, teacher, and illustrator Miriam Klein Stahl—and their daughter in Berkeley, California. In recognition of their work merging art and civic engagement, November 12th was declared “Miriam Klein Stahl and Lena Wolff Day” in the City of Berkeley in 2019.
Lena and Erica first collaborated in 2014, a partnership grounded in shared values of craftsmanship, material exploration, and enduring beauty. Eleven years later, this exhibition marks their return to one another with a new limited-edition collaborative collection, released alongside We Belong to Each Other and celebrating a renewed creative dialogue.