About

Dorota Orlof
born some time ago (1987) in Kraków / Poland,
in web under:http://www.dorkastrong.com/

I’ve studied Painting and Graphic Design on Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. There I’ve gained pretty classical art-education and high manual skills, which gave me good base for further exploration. After taking part in Erasmus exchange (Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg) and finishing the studies in 2013, I decided to satisfy my curiosity and explore Berlin. I started with Erasmus internship in graphic design studio Upstruct / https://www.upstruct.com. The experience was very good and I loved the people there and their work. But I also understood that full-time job is not for me. This opened a period of hard (for newcomer) work of becaming a freelancer and sustaining myself from my project, which are mostly illustrations. It took some time but worked out. In the meantime I was exploring the scene of coworking and maker-spaces and self-organised community based projects. As many freelancers and artists I needed a companion and creative environment. That’s how I step into Alte Giesserei – self organised art and craft space / community, based in former foundry in Berlin Lichtenberg / https://gies.se. I spent there two cool years being involved in organisation, renovation of the space and setting up the screen-printing studio. This experience led to another one. Two years later, I joined project Penthaus für schöne Formate – open risography atelier located in a refugee shelter in Potsdamer Platz / http://penthaus.space. There I’ve started to experiment with risographie and participate in the project by giving the workshops about the Riso-machine and risoprint technology. Paralelly I discovered Fab Lab Berlin / https://fablab.berlin/de, and whole world of digital fabrication. One of the effects of this experience was the exhibition “Paper under Control” together with Eitan Rieger / https://www.facebook.com/paperundercontrol. We lasercutted 14 big size woodcuts and pressed them on the paper by using the printing-press that we’ve built on our own. I was more and more interested in digital fabrication and their use for the art purpose, this is why I decided to join the Fab Academy programm in Barcelona / http://fabacademy.org/2018/labs/barcelona. The sun and sea were another purposes.
And here I am.