Elaine Lorenz

Biography

Elaine Lorenz was born in the Bronx, NY and was influenced by both the artistic community of New York City and the countryside of the Berkshire Mountains where her family summered. Her parents were landscape painters, gardeners and also ran their own Industrial Design business. Elaine Lorenz majored in sculpture as an undergraduate at Marietta College in Ohio and received an MFA in sculpture from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She worked as an artist in the Point of Sales Display and Graphic Design industries. At the same time she began teaching sculpture in adult education classes, art centers and museum educational programs. Elaine Lorenz is now a tenured professor at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ where she teaches sculpture and ceramic sculpture.

Always looking for new materials and methods, Lorenz has made sculpture in such diverse materials as wood, metal, concrete, encaustic over a wire armature and ceramic, while maintaining an overall view of nature as a dominant source of energy and influence on her work. Her approach in making art has been abstract, only alluding to things, relationships or emotions and leaving room for the viewer’s interpretation. Lorenz's sculptures range in size from large-scale site-specific installations to life-size freestanding work as well as more intimate pedestal pieces.

Lorenz’s solo exhibitions include the Fulcrum Gallery, NY, NY; Bertha Urdang Gallery, NY, NY; the NJ State Museum in Trenton; Artspace, Richmond, VA; the Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ; Artyard, Denver, CO; Tomasulo Gallery, Union County College, Cranford, NJ; University College Art Gallery, Fairleigh Dickenson University, Teaneck, NJ; OCCC Center Gallery, Demarest, NJ and the 141 Cedar Arts Center, Corning, NY.

Lorenz has exhibited her work in numerous group exhibitions and sculpture sites throughout the US among them the Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY; The Fredonia Sculpture Project, Fredonia, NY; Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin; Knoxville Museum, Knoxville, TN; The Hunterdon, Morris, Newark and Montclair Museums, NJ; Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, Hempstead; and the International Sculpture Center, Washington, DC. 

Lorenz’s sculptures are in private, public and corporate collections ranging from Alabama, California, Florida, New Jersey and Texas. Awards include: a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, NJ State Council on the Arts Fellowship Grants in 1988 and 1999, Athena Foundation Grant for Socrates Sculpture Park, a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Grant, a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship, and a NJ State Sculpture Commission for the NJ Environmental Center Headquarters at DeKorte Park, Lyndhurst, NJ.