Sophia Wolfe is an interdisciplinary animator, filmmaker, and artist based in Southern California. She creates immersive scapes that explore the shape of air, the life of plants, the relationship of cells, the qualities of light… new worlds that reveal to viewers a magical reality in which the invisible and unnoticed takes center stage.
Sophia Wolfe Studio
To create such scenes, Sofia collaborates with visual and sound artists Christopher Powers, Ethan Brown, and Evan Rashby. Her works have been featured in over 40 art exhibitions in Southern California, and eight international film festivals.
Artist Location: Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley, and Inland Empire, CA
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PARTICIPATION
earmaginations On-site & Online June 7th
Sofia Wolfe (solo)
Garden Ensamble
Partnering with living plants, I create site-responsive stop-motion animations. At my local creek, I search for a plant that seems eager to collaborate. Once discovered, I gently guide its limbs with wire, moving image by image. I respond to its form, its timing, its wisdom. Once our pas de deux is complete, I delicately remove the wire, and the plant recedes back into its status quo, unharmed. Our only trace is the documentation, my presence visible in the occasional frame in which my shadow leaks in or my feet shift the grass. Recently, I’ve begun animating potted plants. As I continue this work, I am interested in the differences between the egos of the free and the isolated.
Sofia Wolfe Studio
Icolette Pond blends in with its environment. Every hour, a glowing story unfolds on the water’s surface. The pond reflects a girl determined to collect the skin of a fish. In response, the fish fights for its life. Viewers are taken on a cyclical journey of their battle, experiencing it from the perspective of their cells, their bodies, and their environment.
The sound adapts and moves synonymously with the visualization of the story. The score is derived from a simple repetitive set of notes that arpeggiate and fluctuate in pitch, sound, and depth. Often, the pitch of notes is slightly detuned and manipulated to create a sense of uneasy and unstable momentum within the cycles. The turbulent changes of the fish is matched in the conflicting tonality of the musical theme. The sounds also clash often to create disorientation and endlessness, leaving the viewer in a state of struggle and repetition (much like the fish itself) – pulling the viewer in closer to the cycles themselves.