11-22-2021 5:23pm

Clifton Art Center’s Sculpture Park Displays New Works by Elaine Lorenz, Herrat Sommerhoff

Two new sculptures, “Windswept Separation,” by Elaine Lorenz, and “Dancing in the Rain” by Herrat Sommerhoff, are on display at the Clifton Arts Center and Sculpture Park, located on the grounds of Clifton Municipal Complex.

Lorenz majored in sculpture as an undergraduate at Marietta College in Ohio and received a Masters of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She worked as an artist in the Point of Sales Display and Graphic Design industries. She is a tenured professor at William Paterson University, Wayne.

“Windswept Separation” is a work that reflects her observation of certain landforms in the American southwest and the weathering processes that produces them. “I am attracted to the evidence of different layers of sandstone as well as the knife-edge lines created by wind and water,” she said. “I created two shapes with space in between to suggest canyons and caves, which are also carved out of the mesas. These sculptural forms always draw me to explore them. I wanted to create a sculpture that allows viewers to enter and experience that feeling of exploration and being engulfed by the form.”

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.

Lorenz’s work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions and sculpture sites throughout the United States. Among some of the sites are the Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY; the Knoxville Museum, Knoxville, TN; New Jersey’s Hunterdon, Morris, Newark and Montclair museums; and the International Sculpture Center, Washington DC.

Born and educated in Germany, Sommerhoff immigrated to the United States and began her art studies at Bergen Community College and continued at the Art Students League in New York as well as at the Art Center of Northern New Jersey in New Milford. Her outdoor sculptures are made out of “found” Styrofoam packing material covered with flexible cement. Her artwork is on exhibit in River Vale, NJ; in Oak Creek, Colorado; and in the Catskills in New York. Her most recent solo exhibit abroad was at the Ministry of the Environment in Berlin, Germany. She is affiliated with the Art Center of Northern New Jersey, SALUTE to Women in the Arts, and NAWA (National Association of Women Artists) in New York City.

For her sculpture, she frequently uses recycled Styrofoam packing material, covered with stucco and acrylic paint. “It holds up very well in all kinds of weather,” Sommerhoff said. “I get a great deal of satisfaction using recycled material and giving it an unexpected colorful new life.”

The Clifton Sculpture Park, which surrounds the Clifton Arts Center, is free and open to the public from Dawn to Dust. Roxanne Cammilleri, director of the Clifton Arts Center, said that visitors to the outdoor sculpture park should follow state and city protocols regarding Covid-19.

For more information on the artwork by Lorenz and Sommerhoff, contact Cammilleri by phone (973-472-5499) or e-mail rcammilleri@cliftonnj.org. Additional information can be found on the websites www.cliftonartscenter.org