Donelle Woolford

Born in Conyers, Georgia, the second of three children to professional parents. Her mother is a natural healer and her father a lawyer

Begins private schooling. She is a bit of a loner, the silent type, but she loves reading and making things with her hands

Develops a strong interest in the arts. Takes classes in woodworking, metalsmithing, glass blowing, ceramics and drawing

While visiting her motherÕs family in North Carolina, she participates in an Asheville Area Arts Council workshop conducted by influential New York artist Lester Hayes

Begins undergraduate study at Yale and is formally introduced to Western art history and thought
Reads Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man
Begins working as Joe Scanlan's studio assistant, helping to fabricate works and manage his fledgling publishing enterprise, Commerce Books

Concentrates on Art History, Studio Art and African-American and Afro-Caribbean courses. Begins to sense that there is more to art than pure thought, expression and reflection, and realizes there are underlying issues of colonialism, history and politics to what is being taught as the art historical canon. She becomes very interested in how and why her art history courses focus on European and American Art - and even then, people of color are rarely represented. The rest of the world - Asia, Africa, the Arab world, the Americas - falls into the déclassé category of "crafts." She begins to wonder where she fits in this mélange.
Deduces that thereÕs a fine line origination, theft, appropriation and influence, and decides that things can flow both ways. Makes her first "Cubist" painting from wood scraps while working in Mr. Scanlan's studio
Edits 4166 Sea View Lane: A Reader, an anthology dedicated to Jorge Pardo's infamous house built as a sculpture under the auspices of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Helps in a take-over of the presidents office in response to the UniversityÕs insufficient response to attacks on students of color at Yale
Earns a BA in Fine Art, with a concentration in Graphic Design, from Yale University
Rents her first studio in the corner of a lumber reclamation factory in New Haven, Connecticut

Participates in her first exhibition in New York, a group show titled Data Mining at Wallspace
She decides it's good to have a stable income, and pick up some new skills from a trade. After treading through several design jobs she settles into advertising. The process of creating images and personas for the public to devour intrigues her. Cutting and pasting reality to make reality. Or is it to alter it? Ambivalent about how much to invest herself in the job, she decides gladly her heart is not in it. She resumes her task in the same spirit as the actors she casts in the advertisements she helps produce. It is one of her greatest performances to date. She continues to make art.