Lola Fraknoi Retrospective Shows a Life Devoted to Art and Elders

THE JEWISH NEWS
By Laura Paull

Artist and arts educator Lola Fraknoi

Lola Fraknoi is a professional artist who wants everyone to try it. Making art, that is. Especially older adults, whom she instructs at multiple venues around San Francisco, introducing them to art techniques that enable self-expression. “Whatever tricks I learned from my classical training in art, I share and adapt for them,” Fraknoi said. “I have profound respect for their life stories and want to allow them to be creative and to develop skills to tell their story.” Fraknoi, 64, has stories of her own that emerge in her art. Born in Peru, the daughter of Jewish Romanian Holocaust survivors who made their way to South America after World War II, she came to the United States to study art as a young woman. Those early years and her family history resonate in her teaching work and in the subjects that have surfaced in her paintings, prints, collages and sculptures. [More]