The United Gas Pipe Line Company Collection

UGPL 0049 Roloff, John, The River at the Bottom of the Sea, ceramic series, 9” x 36” x 18,” 1975 illus: p 26

John Scott Roloff (1947- )

Written in 1976 for the catalog and reproduced as printed, with spelling corrected. Not current.

John Roloff calls his recent series “footnotes to the unconscious.” His studies in both art and marine geology led to the development of his fascination with “that stillness where hath been no sound” of the deep ocean. As D.L. Emblen wrote in ARTWEEK after Roloff’s show at the Lester Gallery in Inverness, California:

“Roloff’s skeletal clay pieces are imponderably still; they are bone-white; they are fusions of lost ships and monstrous fishes; they rest on thick, pale, textured clay slabs, misplaced sections of lunar landscape . . .”

Roloff has become one of the best-known young sculptors in an area where ceramic work has achieved a high level of critical respect and attention, and was included in the 1975 Biennial at the Whitney Museum in New York. He was born in 1947 in Portland, Oregon and studied at the University of California at Davis, receiving a Master’s degree from California State University, Humboldt, in 1973. He taught in several academic centers before accepting a position as Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Kentucky in 1974.

His work has also been seen at the Oakland Museum; the San Francisco Art Institute; the Fendrick Gallery, Washington; and California State University, Los Angeles.

From The Art Collection of United Gas Pipe Line Company (Houston, 1976), curated by Susan Rush.