Biography

For over 40 years, Lana Jean Rose has been recognized for both her solo work and her Public Environmental Art Projects. Lana has a long history of accolades reflecting her many artistic accomplishments. Her abstract paintings, assemblages  and collaborative public art projects have been acknowledged by such notables as Former President Joe Biden, Former Vice President Kamala Harris, Former President Bill Clinton, Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Former California Senator Barbara Boxer, Former California Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Former California Congressman Ron Dellums, and Former California Governor Jerry Brown. As an Environmental Public Artist, she has been commissioned by the Governments of Mexico, Spain, France, Japan, Greece and China to establish her highly acclaimed Public Art Project, "Renaissance of Papermaking: Giving Back the Gift”. Ultimately, becoming a project which created over 23 Oakland, California elementary schools into completely zero-paper waste based schools.

Early in her career, working with different art representatives, her work caught the eye of the Corporate world resulting in a high demand for her work across the United States. Her pieces were soon seen in the offices of the Clorox Company, Oakland, CA, Northern California Kaiser Permanente Hospitals, Bank of America, Los Angeles, CA, The Berkshire Hathaway, Inc in Omaha, Nebraska and Northern California, Charles Schwab, San Francisco, California, Great Western Savings Bank, Northern California, Bay Area of Northern California, Vanguard, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Her art pieces are in many permanent private collections, including Bank of America, Kaiser Permanente, Japan Airlines Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, Dalian, China, and The Museum of Modern Art, Fukuoka, Japan. Lana has been recognized by the 2003, 2006 and 2009 Biennale Internazionale dell’Arte Contemporanea at the Florence and the Venice Biennale in Italy as an internationally emerging artist who will make an artistic difference long past her life time. Over the years, devoted clients continue to be dedicated to collecting her work for over thirty years.

As a professional artist, Lana has explored many different mediums. For years, she found the art of printmaking such as etching and monotypes exciting and a medium for a wide audience to purchase her work. This is important to Lana because she strongly believes living with art enriches family lives. After a few years, she watched the quality of printmaking paper decline and costs skyrocketing. This led her to explore the process of making her own paper and pigments. She reframed from reading “how to” information on papermaking and simply experimented on what worked for her and what didn’t. Her determination to create selfmade paper resulted in paper unique to “Lana”. Her highly desirable works began to be exhibited in galleries both locally and nationally. With the ability to produce her own pigments and self-made paper, Lana was able to create large unusual assemblages. 

She quickly became interested in bringing different ethnic communities of Oakland, California together through creating environmental public art installations. She presented the City of Oakland, California with a public art project called, "Renaissance of Papermaking:” Giving Back the Gift”. With a large grant from the City of Oakland, CA and other major foundations, she created "zero-paper waste" schools in Oakland, CA. Initially, she gained commitment from a group of ten 6th grade students in fifteen schools to be her assistants. The students learned everything she knew as a professional papermaker. With their newly acquired skills the students taught their peers how to recycle classroom paper waste for utilitarian purposes such as homework paper. With the commitment of the elementary teachers students homework was not accepted unless it had been completed on their recycled paper. The students were also taught the dying art form of the traditional Japanese method of papermaking. With these skills, students created artwork which was exhibited at many galleries around the S. F. Bay Area. Originally, the project was proposed as a temporary 6-month project but by the end of its’ first year, "Renaissance of Paper: Giving Back the Gift”, became a 501-c3 non-profit. Lana was invited by Oakland's Sister Cities Fukuoka, Japan and Dalian, China to bring her Oakland elementary students to teach their peers in China and Japan how to recycle and create their own "zero-paper waste" schools. Lana quickly learned these two countries daily lunch milk cartons was made of the fiber Kozo. This was thrilling since Kozo is a highly regarding fiber in papermaking world. The fiber Kozo is very expensive and now the students had access to free Kozo! Even more exciting was to see much of the milk cartons being recycled into incredible art and not being a part of the waste stream!

Lana continues to reinterpret what we know as "art". She’s still creating three-dimensional assemblages and continues to exhibit throughout the world. Currently, she is also dedicating her time to creating encaustic paintings. Currently, she is dedicating her time to creating encaustic paintings.