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Emerson Woelffer spent only the summer of 1949 at Black Mountain College. However, he and his wife Dina are excellent examples of the innovative minds invited to teach brief summer sessions in Black Mountain. Woelffer grew up surrounded by the rhythms of Depression Era jazz in Chicago, an impactful experience that eventually brought him around to a faculty position at the New Bauhaus (now the Chicago Institute of Design). Woelffer’s interactions with students there made him reexamine his own artistic practices, which have been characterized as interdisciplinary, cubistic, and surrealistic.

After BMC, the Woelffers traveled from New York City to Mexico to Colorado and finally to Italy, exhibiting and learning new techniques along the way. He returned to America in 1959, from which point he taught and worked at two notable institutions in Los Angeles until his retirement in 1989. His career in California earned him the title of “Grandfather of L.A. Modernism.”