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 a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

, in 1947. He attended

UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

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 arts center in San Francisco, California, United States. Located in Yerba Buena Gardens, YBCA features visual art, performance, and film/video that celebrates local, natio ...

in San Francisco.

Collections

Roloff's work is held in the permanent collections of the National Museum of American Art, the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

, 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. The permanent collection of the Fin ...

, the Chazen Museum of Art, 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 Washingt ...

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