Vanessa Woods is a San Francisco Bay Area artist working in photography, collage, sculpture, and installation. Her work uses a range of visual strategies and a hybrid approach to image-making to explore discourse around identity, motherhood, and gender. Like motherhood itself, Woods’ artworks and installations are in constant flux, continually remixed and reconstructed to highlight the malleability of maternal experience.
Since earning an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007, Woods’ work has been exhibited across the United States at institutions including Filter Space, Chicago, IL; the Loeb Museum at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA, among others. She has been awarded a Center for Photographic Art Artist Support Grant and has participated in residencies at MacDowell, Peterborough, NH; Djerassi, Woodside, CA; the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Amherst, VA; and Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA. Her work has been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Harpers, among others. Woods lives in Pacifica, CA, with artist Josh Smith and their three children. She is represented by Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco, CA.
Residency: June 2026 - September 2026
Art Exhibition: Friday, September 18 & Saturday, September 19 & Tuesday, September 22