Project Type: Wofford

March 21, 2023

Portals + Battlefields

2022
paintings: acrylic on canvas
as exhibited at Silverlens

6 paintings included in ‘Aquifer’, an exhibition with MM Yu and Dina Gadia at Silverlens Gallery, Philippines. These paintings evolve Wofford’s ‘Rupturre’ project which speaks to history and crisis. However, this recent work is less about abrupt rupture while still being about change and other unstable, mutable energies shifting beneath the surface.

Images or terms that have informed this work, and the shapes and patterns within them: Energy. Mysteries. Spells. Portals. Power. Protection. Containment. Liminality. Neuroplasticity. Electricity. Psychedelia. Vision. Rage. Grief. Loss. Calamity. Battlefields. Flow vs break. Fluidity vs rigidity.

March 8, 2023

Non Verbis Sed Rebus

2022
Indoor mural with wood panels and components
12 ft h x 40 ft w
Facebook San Francisco
Meta Open Arts

While not a rebus in the traditional usage of the term, this piece is still intended as a visual puzzle, of sorts. It is a reflection on creative process and all manner of problem-solving. Its title comes from the Latin phrase, “Not by Words, but by Things.” Patterns on the mural refer to this process: lightning for energy and ideas, ginkgo for persistence and longevity. The speech bubbles contain icons rather than words, since cognition and communication don’t always live in language. The square panels address locality and place, and refer to sites visible from the building’s windows. The wandering break line refers to earthquakes and other forms of rupture that are both destructive and generative.

March 7, 2023

Fire Season

2021
installation/works on paper
installation shown here: Berkeley Art Center
*new acquisition of the Asian Art Museum

September 9, 2020 was Northern California’s infamous “Orange Day,” when wildfire smoke choked the Bay Area, turning the skies into a doomsday scenario. This specific date, compounded with the early months of the pandemic and other tragic national and personal events, spurred on this body of work.

Fire Season employs the complementary/contrasting colors of orange and blue for both tension and relief, as well as solitary figures and boxed forms to embody climate crisis, public health crisis, and personal crisis.

March 23, 2021

Pink Pearl

2020
mural
San Francisco

At the corner of Pink Alley and Pearl Street.

March 23, 2021

Pattern Recognition

2020
mural
acrylic on panel
Asian Art Museum
Lawrence and Gorretti Lui Hyde Street Art Wall

Museum text:
Pattern Recognition’s speech bubbles shout out the names of local Asian American artists as a playful way to reconcile historical omissions. Comic-book speech bubbles exclaim RUTH ASAWA! BERNICE BING! CARLOS VILLA! and the names of six other artists who lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area. These familiar cartoon graphics give voice to Wofford’s mural, which embeds recognizable Asian decorative patterns within a festive 1980s design vocabulary to celebrate Asian American immigrant histories and cultures.

For the patterned background, Wofford chose motifs found in works in the museum collection as well as traditional designs drawn from Asian cultures represented in the surrounding communities. By showcasing the cultures of local immigrant communities and home-grown artists with friendly graphics and familiar patterns, Wofford, a San Francisco–based Filipina American artist and educator, aims to welcome the museum’s neighbors, to let them know that this is a place where they belong.