Carrie Lederer
Carrie Lederer is a painter, sculptor, and installation artist who exhibits her nature-inspired work across the United States. She is a recipient of the prestigious Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Award and has completed public art commissions for Facebook, the City of Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, UCSF Medical Center, Hudson Valley Seed Co., Imagery Winery, and various private collections. In 2023, Lederer’s work was acquired by the City of San Francisco for the new 49 South Van Ness building, which houses many city departments.
Lederer has built site-specific installations for Turtle Bay Museum, de Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Art Source, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, and many others. Her work is included in private collections, such as the Oakland Museum of California, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Stanford Medical Center, First Western Trust Bank, and Prudential Insurance Co., NY.
Her work was profiled in a cover story for MUSES, published by the MSU Department of Arts and Letters, and included in the nationally recognized New American Paintings catalogue. Additionally, her work has been widely reviewed in publications including ARTnews, San Francisco Chronicle, Diablo Magazine, and SquareCylinder.com.
About Lederer’s recent public art projects:
In 2019, Lederer created The Land of Magic Awaits, a 10’ x 40’ mixed-media mural for Facebook’s Artist in Residence program at their new Fremont campus. This project envelops viewers in imagery and urges them to make discoveries camouflaged within the mural—“find the fox,” for instance.
In 2021, she was commissioned by the City of Palo Alto to participate in a public art program called Uplift, producing an 8’ x 10’ mural titled Lost In My Abstract Garden. She was also commissioned by Elevate Art Menlo Park to create a 5’ x 15’ mural for the Menlo Church Teen Center, titled Under the Wide Sky We Gather. Lederer’s newest project is a 9’ x 11’ tapestry for the new City Hall in Sunnyvale, CA.
All of her mural projects are interactive, encouraging viewers to weave together their own stories and interpretations. Each time they see the work, they discover something new.
Lederer earned a BFA from Michigan State University and currently lives and works in Oakland.
Artist Statement
My current work consists of ornate compositions that use a pattern-based topography to portray ideas about land and our natural world. I use a myriad of materials to construct images that are simultaneously ordered, in disarray, realistic, and abstract. The tapestry-like format of the terrain is bursting with energy, and like our natural world, one hub of activity connects and interacts with the next.
The nature-based imagery often focuses on the delicate, minute natural systems that are sometimes unnoticed or unseen. I want to take my audience into a different physical space with my work. I want people to look at my work, consider the earth in new ways, and feel inspired to tread lightly.
It all stems from a personal curiosity about nature, our connection to it, and a fascination with its immense power and beauty. For me, the garden becomes a metaphor for the universe. I’m interested in micro and macro perspectives to convey the bold and delicate forms that exist in the mysterious realms that surround us. The images are meant to transport viewers across abstracted land and sky, illuminating a path to the deep, dark recesses of our universe. The science of fractals is important to my work—there is an inherent composition embedded in this dynamic system. Fractals tell the story of the wild transformations in nature that take place daily, providing order to a chaotic world of energy and change. I respond to these natural wonders, charmed and fascinated by nature’s intrinsic capacity to create and reproduce patterns.
My daily, up-close encounter with nature is the fifty-foot journey through our family garden, from home to the studio. I am continually captivated by nature’s sheer exuberance—a spectacle of complexity—beautiful, simple, and haphazard.
How Has Your Environment Influenced Your Art Practice?
I was raised in the urban jungle of Detroit, but my parents regularly brought us five kids to the Detroit Institute for the Arts and let us roam around for hours. Those family field trips and the artworks I saw there influenced and inspired me. Diego Rivera’s larger-than-life Detroit Industry murals fascinated me—I spent hours looking at these tour de force frescoes that spanned all four walls of a massive gallery. Some of the art terrified and intrigued me, like Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes.
Every summer, my folks piled all five kids into the station wagon and drove up to northern Canada to camp for several weeks. We had the run of the woods. This is where I learned about birding, how to fish, how to classify trees, and how to build campfires.
Nature has been a major influence on my current imagery, as has my love of the garden. I’ve been an avid gardener for years, and that labor of love inspires me every day, too. I walk the seventy-foot journey through our family garden from my home to my studio, and the seed pods, flowers, ferns, and winding vines become a metaphor for the universe. There’s an order in the turbulence of nature, and that’s what I explore in my paintings and installations.
If Your Artwork Was a Mirror, What Would It Reflect?
My artwork would reflect nature—it would project the realistic yet abstracted shapes and connections that are all around us. It would reflect the micro and the macro, along with the textures, sounds, and essence of nature—the way one hub of activity reaches out and joins with the next.
Woven through each of my artworks is my fascination with fractals—complex geometric figures made up of infinite patterns that repeat. Each time they repeat, they become smaller, but always similar to the original pattern. Fractals might appear tangled and in disarray, but as you explore and become mesmerized by them, you’ll see the structure embedded in the system. This is the story my artwork reflects—it’s the story of transformations in nature that take place every day.
What Is the Most Difficult Part of Your Process?
Getting started and switching palettes can be challenging. Several years ago, I made the decision to shift gears and let go of my long-time friend Green. (Not entirely, but my green-centric addiction was put aside.) It felt jarring at first to put the neon pinks, luminous oranges, yellow, and marine blue front and center. But this shift, though awkward at first, has ultimately been liberating and fulfilling—all my new colors now seem to nourish the work.
Sometimes facing a new substrate can be tricky. It’s the proverbial blank canvas—especially if it’s a larger canvas or a precious piece of paper—there can be a moment of dread towards the unknown. But once I’ve got the engines started, I’m all in. I’ve also learned that working on several paintings simultaneously is a good strategy, because if I get stuck on one, I can move on to the next piece and let the other one marinate in the corner of the studio for a while. These days, in addition to paint, I’m using various metallics, fabrics, glitter inks, thread, yarn, collage, and more, and with each addition, it feels like a dare.
Also, marketing myself and my work are not my favorite things to do. I’d much rather be holed up in the studio or out in the garden with my hands deep in the soil.
What Is the Most Rewarding Aspect of Pursuing Art?
For 25 years, I straddled my career as an artist with a full-time job as Curator at the Bedford Gallery, a contemporary art space in Walnut Creek, CA. Between work, family, and making art, I had ten plates spinning in the air at all times. My studio practice often had to wait for those precious free moments. For years, I longed for more dedicated studio time, for time to just think and dream, and for the psychic headspace to go bigger. But I never let go of my fascination with nature and my drive to create new work.
Now that my son is on his own and the work world is behind me, I’ve put the spotlight solely on my studio practice. I have more time to focus on the work and immerse myself in different media, and I have also realized a number of public art projects. The work is my ultimate reward, and I’m grateful to have a daily art practice.
While it’s imperative to have time in the studio to simply work, I also enjoy the engaging pressure and focus of working towards an exhibition. For my show at The Fourth Wall Gallery in Oakland, I designed a unique floor-to-ceiling wallpaper onto which we installed paintings and sculptural objects. That installation was a difficult but inspiring challenge.
And of course, seeing my art go to a good home and knowing that my vision has positively reached another person—that’s a wonderful and very rewarding feeling too.
If Your Art Is Part of a Lineage, Who Would Be in It and Why?
The implied message of my art is to see the environment—from the darkest nooks and crannies of the soil to the cosmos that are far beyond our grasp—as part of a greater whole that we are all connected to in our daily lives. For me, nature and the environment are more than sight—they’re texture, sound, and vibration too. So, my art lineage consists of artists who channel the energy, pitch, and tone of the natural world in their work.
