I am Sophia Wolfe, a Southern Californian interdisciplinary artist who practices drawing, painting, animation, projection, installation, and narrative filmmaking. I graduated as Valedictorian and Student President of Encore High School of the Arts in 2019, and received my Bachelor’s from California State University, Northridge in Fine Arts with a minor in Entertainment Media Management in 2024. I now am studying with University of Southern California’ MFA Cinema program, Expanded Animation: Research + Practice, a program which emphasizes the interconnectivity of materiality, dreams, and consciousness with animation. Through this, I have the opportunity to work under the Hanson Robotics “Sentience Quest” team, taking a small part in enhancing the ever-evolving humanoid robot, Sophia the Robot.
The driving force behind my work is curiosity about our natural world. I research through my dreams, talking with nature, and through the process of making. My practice takes many forms, and it is essential that I cater the medium to best explore the concept. For example, animating plants allows me to become familiar with their structures and their surroundings, while working with paper puppets for my mathematical film Fantastical Revelations of Art, Math, and Romance helps me conceptualize two-dimensional realities. The materiality of the presentation is equally considered; Icolette, a film about a girl's battle with a fish, is presented by projecting the movie onto the surface of a pond.
My work has been featured internationally in fine art galleries, film festivals, and alternative spaces. Icolette was a semifinalist for the 2024 Student Academy Awards.