Libbie Soffer

Making art is how I journal life.

My art is a distillation of an ongoing inner dialogue. I make art to resolve concerns and life’s daily challenges. All of this is colored by my own personal history and world view. I feel like a social anthropologist as I observe people in close proximity watching to see how we deal with a shrinking planet.

My art is influenced by many hours of public radio in the studio. I include aural data with other observations into my art making. Although my work isn’t visually narrative, its approach is social commentary. I take license with characters, real and invented, to further understand contemporary concerns and global chaos. My own history shapes the final editing of form. An economic use of color narrows the focus. I frequently subject the materials to physical changes like burning or sanding to include the passage of time. I continue the distillation of form as a dialogue continues between me and the materials. There’s an ongoing balance of control and surrender to those materials as a resolution evolves.

“a gathering” is a rounding up of my current concerns.

Libbie Soffer/ May 2006

“….a gathering ”

constructions by Libbie Soffer

May 5 resident artist, Libbie Soffer, will present a show of multi media constructions at Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art. The constructions combine found elements with more traditional art materials. Gender politics is a subtext in her work as she incorporates vestiges of the domestic landscape with a nod to universal women’s issues. The exhibition opens with First Friday on May 5 and runs through Sunday, May 28.

Soffer’s work is social commentary. “….a gathering” combines the image of a household iron in its many permutations. This” iron” art evolved as a continuum of her laundry installations. Lengthy visits to Mexico and India exposed the artist to the cultural landscape where women constitute much of the “street commerce.” Her dimensional forms address the cultural mores and relationships she observed in those settings.

Soffer’s first art experience as a child was drawing and sewing simultaneously. Sewing became the backbone of her fiber studies while at Moore College. Three dimensional form as image prevails as her major focus using stoneware, wood, paper, fabric, and construction materials. While using more universal references, her personal narration dictates the shapes. She then rubs color into the surface to let the forms evolve into three dimensional drawings. Her subdued palette keeps the viewer focused on the forms and the newly revealed nuances.

Soffer was born in Wilmington, Delaware and graduated from Temple University school of Dental Hygiene in 1962. After raising 2 sons and practicing Dental Hygiene for almost 20 years she enrolled in Moore College’s Textile department. She completed Moore in 1984 and began an art career with a one person show at Delaware County Community College using her senior thesis work. Her Encaustic work in “Oil + Wax” is currently traveling throughout the United States. She has shown at the Smithsonian, University of Minnesota, Wichita State University, the, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, and more recently at Noyes Museum in “Ephemeral Threads.” In 1998 she was recipient of a resident artist grant in printmaking at Ringling School of Design. Her work was featured in Fiberarts, January, 2001. She currently teaches workshops in design, color, and ritual arts. Libbie lives in Wallingford, Pa with her painter husband.