Born in India in 1980, Priyanka Rana’s early inquiries into aesthetics and philosophy and professional work in exhibitions led her to establish a full-time sculpture practice in 2018. Largely self-taught, Rana’s experiments with various sculptural materials have led to anearly-singular engagement with untreated wood. Her practice is rooted in ecology and sustainability; she works with local trees, transforming naturally felled trunks into abstract sculptures using a range of power tools. Rana chars many of her surfaces, which she likens to “painting with fire.” 

Born in India in 1980 and now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Priyanka Rana is a sculptor whose practice engages ecology, material intelligence, and the layered temporalities held within wood. Having lived across three continents—including formative periods in India and France—she works at the intersection of cultural memory and place-based knowledge, blending scientific awareness with ancestral understandings of the natural world.

Trained in mathematics and economics, Rana brings an analytical sensibility to form and process. She established her full-time practice in 2018, developing a self-directed, immersive relationship with wood grounded in experimentation, physical labor, and sustained material attunement.

Rana works primarily with untreated California woods, especially redwoods. Her process spans the physically dangerous to the meticulously delicate—moving from chainsaws and grinders to interventions with silk threads, thorns harvested from her backyard, and hand tools. Her sensibilities are shaped by the cultural frameworks of India and the material possibilities of California; in India, trees are regarded as wise, sentient beings, and in California, the DIY ethos, knowledge-sharing communities, advanced tools, and abundantly available reclaimed wood expanded the scale and ambition of her practice.

She has completed public art commissions for Palo Alto and Dublin, California, integrating community engagement, site specificity, and ecological reflection. Her work has been exhibited at the Montalvo Arts Center, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Sonoma County, Berkeley Art Center, Palo Alto Art Center, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, and internationally at the Museu de la Pell Cal Boyer in Spain. In 2025, an image of her work, etched onto nanofiche, was included in a lunar time capsule through a nonprofit–NASA collaboration.

Rana continues to build a practice rooted in curiosity, ecological attunement, and cross-cultural ways of sensing the world.

Priyanka Rana

b. 1980, lives and works in San Francisco Bay Area, California

Solo Shows/Installations/Activations

Our Stories Live Underground, Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA.                          2025

Make art session, South Asian Art and Literature festival, Stanford, CA                       2024

Art activation, Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, CA 2024

Inner Life, Cabrillo College Gallery, Aptos 2024

Echo, installation of public artwork, commissioned by city of Dublin, CA  2022

Slice of Green, Dublin Heritage Park, commissioned by city of Dublin, CA 2022                

Memories are the Antidotes, solo exhibition,

International Art Museum of America, San Francisco, CA 2022

Window of Inspiration, installation of public artwork at

Johnson Park, commissioned by the city of Palo Alto, CA 2021

Group Shows

Takshanam, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, India <forthcoming> 2026

CALeidoscope: Evolving Reflections of California, Bedford Gallery, CA <forthcoming> 2026

Futbol, Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara <forthcoming> 2026

Refuge II, Center for Creativity, Redwood City, CA 2025

Annual Auction, Institute of Contemporary Art,  San Jose, CA 2025

Transformations (TextilFest), Museu de la Pell Cal Boyer, Igualada, Barcelona, Spain 2025

Group Show, Office of Arts and Culture of San Mateo County, California 2025

Unseen Histories (KarlSF), Levis Plaza, San Francisco, CA 2025

Made of Memories, New Museum of Los Gatos, CA 2024

ART FWD, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Marin, CA                                           2024

Letter From the Network, Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA 2024

Rediscover, Reimagine, Revive, ChanZuckerberg Community Initiative, Redwood city, CA 2024

A Question of Balance, Museum of Sonoma County, Santa Rosa, CA.                                     2024

Socle Du Monde, Upper Market gallery, San Francisco, CA 2024

Metamorphosis, Mercury20 Gallery, Oakland, CA 2024

17th annual Pajaro Valley Arts (PVA) sculpture exhibition, CA 2023

Aurora-Health &Humanities, Catalyst Gallery, University of California, Irvine, CA 2023

Annual Fundraiser for Nimbus Arts, Napa Valley, CA 2023

Art Market SF Fair, Gallery 1202, CA                   2023

Huq, I seek no favor, Gallery 5, San Jose State University, CA 2023

Showcasing of selected local artists, San Jose Playhouse, San Jose, CA 2022

South Asian Literature & Art Festival 2022, Montalvo Art Center, Saratoga 2022

Silicon Valley Sculpture Fair 2022, Menlo College, Menlo Park, CA 2022

Restart, Palo Alto Art Center, Palo Alto, CA 2022

Wall2Wall annual auction, Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Sonoma, CA 2022             

Silicon Valley Sculpture Fair 2021, Menlo College, Menlo Park, CA 2021

100th Anniversary, Pacific Art League, Palo Alto, CA                       2021

Featured artist of the week on KQEDArts Instagram (online) 2021

Slice of Life, San Francisco Women Artists, San Francisco, CA 2021

Large wood sculpture privately commissioned, Los Altos Hills, CA 2021            

‘What’s Next for Earth’, The Millennium Alliance for 2021

for The Humanity and Biosphere website (Online)

Outside the Box, Healdsburg Center for the Arts, Healdsburg, CA 2020

California Sculpture SLAM, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, CA 2020

Education

MBA, Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management, Delhi, India 2002–2004

MA (Economics-first year only), Punjab University, Chandigarh, India 2001

BA (Economics, Mathematics, English Literature), MCM, Chandigarh, India 1999–2001

Workshops

Tarkashi workshop, Jaipur India. Nov, 2025

Metal Sculpting & Sculpting Courses, West Valley College, Saratoga CA                       2019–2000

Workshop with China Pal, Kumartoli, Kolkata, India Oct, 2019

School of Visual Philosophy, San Jose CA Jun, 2018

Employment

Market Research Consultant, Evalueserve, Gurgaon, India 2004–2005

Sr. Consultant, Zinnov, India / USA 2006–2008

CEO and Founder, EventStylists, Foster City, CA 2009–2011

Vice President-Client Services, Ten23, San Francisco, CA 2012–2013

Vice President and Founder, BollywoodYourself, Atherton, CA 2014–2017