Solange Roberdeau (b. 1982, Albion, California) is an artist and educator whose work celebrates the fluid nature of perception through nuanced material tensions, ordered forms, and organic mark-making. Working with paper, ink, metal leaf, and other process-based materials, her practice draws from the environments in which she works, allowing imagery to emerge through a generative and reciprocal process between herself, materials, and environment. Whether natural phenomena are incorporated directly or translated through abstraction, her work is informed by their ephemeral cadences — those of wind, shifting light, water, shadows. Improvisation and attention to the characteristics of materials allow imagery to unfold between intention and chance, with each mark informing the next. Her practice engages both the process of making and the perceptual experience of those who encounter her work. She seeks to create an atmospheric space of possibility, one that invites questions rather than offering fixed conclusions.
Teaching is an integral part of Roberdeau’s art practice. She teaches printmaking at Mendocino College and, through workshops and college-level courses, develops accessible approaches to artmaking that can be adapted to people with varied levels of experience and different contexts. Her teaching is informed by her studio practice and emphasizes exchange, experimentation, and learning through process. She is particularly interested in the evolution of craft techniques, using traditional methods and their material histories as invitations for new forms of mark-making and contemporary experimentation. Her teaching and practice encompass drawing and printmaking techniques, exploring how the distinct histories, constraints, and material behaviors of each technique can generate new possibilities for making.
Roberdeau received a BFA in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2005. In 2006, she lived in Oaxaca City for a year, a formative experience that deepened her interest in the region’s rich and integrated traditions of craft, materiality, and social practices. From Oaxaca, she moved directly to New York City, where she lived for seven years, working as a studio assistant for artists Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, and Yvonne Jacquette; as an assistant at fine art screen-printing studio Brand X Editions; and teaching printmaking at the Textile Art Center in Gowanus, Brooklyn. She received an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2012, where she later taught as an adjunct faculty member from 2019–2022. She is the recipient of the 2023 ACMC & Mendocino County Board of Supervisors Artist Champion Award. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at Blunk Space, Point Reyes, California; Bolinas Museum, California; Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, New Mexico; International Print Center New York, New York; Municipal Bonds, San Francisco, California; Abbaye de La Couronne, France; and Arcade Gallery, Egypt.
Roberdeau has participated in residencies at the Abbey Foundation, Boonville, California; JB Blunk Residency, Inverness, California; Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos, New Mexico; Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, Connecticut; and Can Serrat, Spain. She lives and works in Elk, California, where her practice is deeply informed by the landscape of Northern California. She is represented by Municipal Bonds.