Jennifer Rochlin

Jennifer Rochlin (b. 1968 in Baltimore, Maryland; lives and works in Altadena, CA) received her MFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999. Later moving to the west coast, an unexpected opportunity teaching ceramics at an all-girls Catholic high school prompted her first experiments with clay. Largely self-taught in the medium, vessels eventually became central to her practice. 

Rochlin builds terracotta pots through coil and slab construction, through which the imperfect marks of the artist’s hand are left imprinted on the surface of the clay. The sculptures are engraved with sgraffito techniquesand take on unusual shapes, where imagery moves fluidly across portraiture, politics, art history, and floral patterns, oscillating between personal and collective vignettes. The artist is drawn to pots for their unique time-based storytelling capabilities that resemble film: in circuitous choreography, the viewer must walk around the vessel for the narrative to unfold, unlike the immediate experience of a canvas. 

Rochlin’s recent solo exhibitions include Suns and Lovers, Mariane Ibrahim (Paris, 2024); Paintings on Clay, Hauser & Wirth (New York, 2024); P-22, SHRINE (New York, 2022); Foothills, Sorry We’re Closed (Brussels, 2022); California dreamin’ – “On such a winter’s day”, MAKI Gallery (Tokyo, 2020); and Jennifer Rochlin, The Pit (Glendale, 2020).