John Roloff (b. 1947) is an American sculptor and conceptual craft artist. He is known for his site-specific work dealing with natural systems and the environment.

Education and early life

Roloff was born in

Portland, Oregon Portland ( ) is the List of cities in Oregon, most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest region. Situated close to northwest Oregon at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, ...

, in 1947. He attended

UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

where he studied geology and art. He completed his graduate work in 1973.

Work

During the late 1970s through the early 1990s, Roloff produced a series of site-specific kiln/furnace pieces. In addition to ceramic work and sculpture, Roloff has created numerous works of public art including the work, ''Green Glass Ship–Deep Gradient/Suspect Terrain,'' at the

Yerba Buena Center Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) is a multi-disciplinary Contemporary art, contemporary arts center in San Francisco, California, United States. Located in Yerba Buena Gardens, YBCA features visual art, performance, and film/video that cel ...

in San Francisco.

Collections

Roloff's work is held in the permanent collections of the

National Museum of American Art The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...

, the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...

, the

Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), comprising the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public arts institution in the city of San Francisco. FAMSF's combined attendance was 1,1 ...

, the

Chazen Museum of Art The Chazen Museum of Art is an art museum located on the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Madison, Wisconsin. Founded as the Elvehjem Art Center (later Elvehjem Museum of Art) in 1970, the museum moved into a brutalist buildi ...

, among other institutions. His papers from 1980 to 2002 are held in the

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washing ...

of the Smithsonian Institution.

References

1947 births 20th-century American sculptors 20th-century American artists Living people 21st-century American sculptors University of California, Davis alumni {{US-sculptor-stub