Carrie Lederer is a painter, sculptor, and installation artist who exhibits her nature-inspired work across the United States. Lederer is a recipient of the prestigious Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Award, and she has completed public art commissions for Facebook, the City of Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, and Menlo Park, UCSF Medical Center, Hudson Valley Seed Co., Imagery Winery, and 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, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Art Source, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, and many others. Her work is also in private collections, including the Oakland Museum of California, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Stanford Medical Center, First Western Trust Bank, and Prudential Insurance Co., NY.

Lederer’s work is profiled in the current Create! Magazine, issue #43, and will also be included in a forthcoming coffee table book titled Art That Heals, a collection of art at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her work was featured as the cover story for MUSES, published by the MSU Department of Arts and Letters, and included in the nationally recognized New American Paintings catalog. Lederer’s work has been widely reviewed in publications including ARTnews, San Francisco Chronicle, Diablo Magazine, and SquareCylinder.com.

Lederer earned a BFA from Michigan State University and currently lives and works in Oakland.

Instagram: @carrielederer
Website: www.carrielederer.com

What inspired you to focus on ornate compositions and pattern-based topography in your work?

I’m inspired by nature, and I tap into our natural environment with my paintings, sculpture, public art commissions, and site-specific installations. Ornate compositions and patterns are what I see when I look at the earth or when I try to imagine what I can’t see. My imagery is meant to transport viewers to those corners of the natural world and the cosmos that are familiar to us and also out of reach.

How do you use materials to create images that are both realistic and abstract?

I use fabric, tufts of yarn, metallic threads, glass eyes, and more to help activate the surface of my surreal landscapes. These materials often serve as a launch point for growing the imagery and allow me to build on the abstraction or add realistic natural elements, such as flowers or grass. I sometimes see these textured materials as interlopers. I combine them with my painted imagery, and they usually guide me to new pathways and ideas. They also extend the narrative in ways that I might not have discovered if I had only used a single medium.

Can you share how your personal curiosity about nature influences your artistic practice?

I’m interested in the quiet and the chaos that I find in the natural world, and I’m fascinated by all that is hiding in plain sight. These are the concepts that drive me. I’m also influenced by the idea that nature isn’t just what we can see and smell; it’s also what we can feel and sense. It’s pitch and tone, which are mostly invisible, and vibrations, which create tiny ripples on the surface of water. Where do they all originate from? It’s the millions and billions of connections in nature that join together in this sort of chorus that keeps me guessing and totally inspired.

How do you hope your work will impact viewers’ perception of the natural world?

When viewers interact with my work, my hope is that they experience my dedication and devotion to nature and my concern about climate change. What will the environmental changes we are experiencing today mean for future generations of our planet? Those ideas and concerns feed the drama and color palette of my work and are part of the dialogue I’m having with viewers. By articulating the micro and the macro, I want to remind viewers to look at the big picture, but also to look deeply at the inner workings of the environment. I want them to remember that we all share this land, water, and sky. The planet sustains us during our lifetimes, and then we leave it behind for every living thing that follows. Let’s tread lightly.

What role do fractals play in your work, and how do they contribute to your themes?

Fractals are at the center of my art and have been for years—they are infinitely captivating. Fractals are energy. They’re complex geometric figures made up of patterns that repeat themselves, each time on a smaller scale, and each smaller version is referred to as a “self-similar” form. Fractals may seem chaotic, and in a way, they are. But if you really study them, you will see the order and symmetry that fractals produce as they transform nature every day, every second. My work is a response to the layers of tangled disorder that give way to order and change.

How does your daily journey through your family garden influence your art?

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 fifty-foot journey through our family garden from my home to my studio, and the grasses, flowers, 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.

What messages do you hope to convey through your public art commissions and site-specific installations?

Some of the same messages I convey in my paintings are woven through my public art commissions and site-specific installations. Those messages are to really see our environment and all its wonder—and all its vulnerability. We are the stewards of this precious planet—we only have one, so let’s cherish it like we do our loved ones. I want viewers to interact with my work and see something different each time they engage with it. I add details that make the work an environmental scavenger hunt. “Find the fox” is a favorite. I want viewers to be enveloped by the imagery; the more they look, the more invested they become. And I want the embrace they perceive when they look at my work to be a metaphor for the natural world that surrounds us.