Lisa Rockford is an artist, educator, and curator. Raised in Palm Beach County, FL, Lisa earning her BFA in Painting and BS in Art Therapy from Bowling Green State University in 1999, and a Master of Fine Arts in 2001 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since returning to South Florida in 2007, Lisa has established herself as an artist, curator, and educator. She currently holds rank as a tenured Assistant Professor in the Fine Arts department at Broward College.
As an artist, Lisa has exhibited her artwork nationally since 1992. She was awarded the Innovative Collaborative FAB Grant for her solo exhibition at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood in 2011, and has since been invited to exhibit at The Deering Estate, MAC Fine Art, The Lowe Museum of Art, and the survey “100 Degrees in the Shade,” among others. Lisa is an avid arts advocate, with a passion for connecting with the community through visual art; and has organized multi-disciplinary exhibitions, public lectures, artist workshops, and interactive experiences that are all designed to reach a wide audience. In 2013, she was dubbed a "Rising Star" in Gold Coast Magazine’s article, “40 under 40,” for her community building events for the local art community. Lisa has developed multiple art events in South Florida – spending much of her free time curating exhibitions in a variety of public venues. Among the first to be selected as an artist in residence at Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts in Fort Lauderdale, Lisa was the principal organizer in converting the lofts’ 3 floors of common space into a public exhibition space, 1310 Gallery. Lisa quickly gained media attention for her thematic curated exhibitions at the gallery, pivoted around her goal to offer exhibition opportunities to underrepresented regional artists. One of her first exhibitions at 1310 was to feature talent within the community of adjunct art professors. Five of her curated exhibitions, “The Myth of Power,” “Humoratorium: The Art of Whimsy,” “Appropriated Gender,” “Fiber Optics,” and “Gritty in Pink,” have received grants from the Broward county Cultural Division. Lisa has worked with over 250 regional and national artists,and been commissioned by or worked collaboratively with Whitespace-The Mordes Collection, The Girls Club Collection, the Broward Art Guild, Young At Art Museum, The Projects Contemporary Art Space at FATvillage, Bailey Contemporary Arts, and Art Nexus. These projects have been featured in various newspapers, on PBS’ television series Art Loft, and five of these shows were awarded CIP grants through the Broward County Cultural Division. As a professor, Lisa established the campus’s first visiting artist lecture and workshop series at Broward College North Campus, which she developed with an interdisciplinary and inter-departmental focus, curating the series with the theme of “STEAM” (Art + STEM fields). The visiting artist series has been renewed annually, and grown in scope to include prestigious nationally renowned speakers like John Edmark, Tiffany Trenda, Susan Taylor Glasgow, Nathalie Miebach, Richard Dupont, & Brian Dettmer. Lisa was awarded with the Robert Elmore International Exchange Award through the Honors department in 2014 to travel to China for Broward College, and selected to be a faculty representative in the Critical Thinking Scholars Program. Lisa has presented educational lectures, and acted as moderator of panel discussions for at the International Arts & Humanities conference in Athens Greece in 2017 The Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Bowling Green State University, Girls Club-The Collection of Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz, Bailey Contemporary arts, The FAR Gallery in FAT Village Fort Lauderdale, the Boynton Beach Public Library, as well as presented workshops at Young at Art Museum, and guided tours for Art Nexus at the official Art Basel Miami Beach. |
