ljr bio
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my biographyTRANSCRIPT
//L. J. ROBERTS
L. J. Roberts holds a MFA in Fine Arts and MA in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of
the Arts. She completed a BA in Studio Art and a BA in English from the University of Vermont. Her
studio practice primarily consists of large-scale site-specific knitted installations
created with children’s toy knitting cranks. Her installations occasionally include guerilla actions.
Her work has been shown most recently in The Bedford Gallery, The San Francisco Arts Commission
Gallery, the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Folk Art, Fresh Meat in the Gallery, Little Tree Gallery,
The Headlands Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure and Naomi Arin Contemporary Art,
The Bellevue Arts Museum, Grizzly Grizzly, The Leslie/Lohman Gallery for Gay Art, and Page Bond
Gallery. L. J. also maintains a critical writing practice that bridges craft and queer theory.
Her writing can be found in the anthology Extra/Ordinary: Craft Culture in Contemporary Art
published by Duke University Press. She is the past co-chair of the Queer Caucus for Art, an
affiliate of the College Art Association.
L. J. was the past recipient of the Ian Crawford Memorial Award, The Ora Mary Pelham Poetry Prize,
the Toni Lowenthal Memorial Scholarship, a Murphy Cadogan Fellowship, the Dennis Leon Award, a
Craft Research Fund Graduate Grant from the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design, and
a 2008 Searchlight Artist Award from the American Craft Council, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship,
and was a 2009 Smack Mellon Hot Pick Artist. L. J. was a 2009 Artist-in-Residence at The Museum of
Arts and Design in New York City and at Leake and Watts, a non-profit in The Bronx. Most recently L.
J. was the 2010-2011 Fountainhead Fellow/Emerging Artist-in-Residence in the Craft and Materials
Studies Department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. Her work will appear next
in Craft Futures: 40 Under 40 at the Renwick Gallery of The Smithsonian American Art Museum. Born
and raised in Detroit, Michigan, she currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.