Connecting the Arts
he/him
Jake Vanderwerf is a sculptor and jeweller living in Edmonton, Alberta. His art is greatly influenced by the natural world – with dashes of the fantastic thrown in the mix. He’s been working with wire as a hobbyist since 2010, and has been actively pursuing marketing his work under the moniker Rooted Romantic since 2018.
Jake Vanderwerf is a full-time mixed media artist who lives and works in Edmonton, Alberta. His medium of choice is copper wire.
He moved around a lot growing up: living in Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta. One constant no matter where he found himself was his love for nature and the act of creating. Jake is self-taught. He found his passion for working with wire in 2008 for a high school project, and settled on working mostly with copper when he launched Rooted Romantic in 2018.
He draws his inspiration from the natural world – the sheer diversity of flora and fauna is an endless source of ideas. In 2020 he started experimenting with kinetic art and automata, inspired by the works of others, like Syl Gautier and Penny Thomson Works.
When he isn’t creating with wire, you can find him out in nature trying to find Chicken of the Woods or identifying plants, photographing, gardening, reading, or trying out new recipes in the kitchen.
Jake was a featured artist in the 2021 Art From the Unknown hosted by Alberta’s NDP.
