Sentient Terrains presents a series of new ceramic projects, assemblages, and related site studies by John Roloff. The ceramic works as ship/vector objects investigate metabolism, climate, and transmutation and are a continuation of the Land/Sea series shown in the gallery in 2019. Site studies and assemblages in the form of proposals, video, and diagrammatic expressions examine holistic and systemic definitions of ceramics related to specific places, materials, and geologic time. Flags exploring metabolism, transmutation, and correlations between living and non-living systems are suspended from the walls and activate the gallery with subtle movement. Two large-scale photographic images of Medieval/Anthropocene characters anchor the space as witnesses. 

For the past 50 years, John Roloff's work has been fundamentally about ecology in an expanded frame. His understanding of land, sea, and atmosphere engages interrelated cycles of natural and man-made materials and processes. This world view, originating in studies of the earth sciences, was developed through the practice of ceramics, installations, and conceptual proposals. His practice embodies material and conceptual transmutation as a symbiotic merging of physical matter and living systems across geologic time as an emergent paradigm he defines as global metabolism. 

Roloff's practice embraces an integration of ecology, ontology, self-organizing systems, energy flow, and aesthetics with expanded ceramics as protagonist, engaging narratives that seek to transcend the dichotomy of the living and non-living. The retrospective exhibition of 2019 surveyed John’s decades-long investigation of geologic time, sites, and other natural phenomena. 

John Roloff studied geology and art at the University of California, Davis in the 1960s and received his MFA from California State University, Humboldt in 1973. In addition to numerous environmental, site-specific installations in the US, Canada, and Europe, John’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, UC Berkeley Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian Institution, Photoscene Cologne, the Venice Architectural and Art Biennales, The Snow Show in Kemi, Finland, and Artlantic: Wonder, Atlantic City, NJ. 

Roloff's ceramic and related works are included in collections of The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA; Achenbach Foundation, San Francisco, CA; Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA; Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI; Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, Alfred, NY; University Art Museum, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; Newport Harbor Museum, Newport Beach, CA; Museum of American Crafts, New York, NY; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Lannon Foundation, Palm Beach, FL; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ; Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA; Weisman Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN; University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, NV; Colorado Collection, University of Colorado Art Museum, Boulder, CO; Viart Corporation; Robert Pfannebecker, Lancaster, PA; Hootkin Collection, New York, NY; Rene deRosa Collection, Napa, CA; Djerassi Foundation, Woodside, CA, and Fung/Talley Collection, Carmel, Woodside, CA, among numerous additional private collections. Public art works that explore geologic and related concepts can be found at sites such as: Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco, CA; University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN; I-5 Colonnade Park, Seattle, WA, and Stanford University, Stanford, CA. 

Roloff has received three Artist's Visual Arts Fellowships from the NEA; a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship; a California Arts Council grant for visual artists, and a Bernard Osher Fellowship at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA. He is Professor Emeritus of Sculpture/Ceramics at San Francisco Art Institute. John lives and works in Oakland, CA. 

Anglim/Trimble