Diving Into History with Jenifer Wofford

Jenifer K Wofford is a San Francisco-based artist and educator whose work plays with notions of hybridity, authenticity and global culture, often with a humorous bent. She is also 1/3 of the Filipina-American artist trio M.O.B.

Her work has been exhibited in the Bay Area at the Berkeley Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, YBCA, San Jose Museum of Art, Southern Exposure, and Kearny Street Workshop. Further afield, she has shown at New Image Art (Los Angeles), Wing Luke Museum (Seattle), DePaul Museum (Chicago), Silverlens Galleries (Philippines), VWFA (Malaysia), and Osage Gallery (Hong Kong).

A well-known arts educator, Wofford is part-time faculty in Fine Arts and Philippine Studies at the University of San Francisco. She has also taught at UC Berkeley, Mills College, the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University. She holds degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and UC Berkeley (MFA).

Victoria Manalo Draves, illustration by Jenifer Wofford

"VMD" is a suite of 15-20 drawings, paintings and illustrations of Filipina-American Olympic champion diver Victoria Manalo Draves. These images will engage VMD’s legacy in an abstract, poetic way that focuses on tension points between worlds; the dreamlike world of her diving practice versus the realities of her daily life.

This suite of work will help inform the development of more historically specific and accurate illustrations for a 2021 children’s book on Manalo Draves’ true story.