During an artist opening reception on July 26, 2025, for San Francisco artist Lilli Lanier at Cafe Alma, 888 Innes in Bay View-Hunters Point, Lanier showed a series of portraits of well-known celebrities as well as her grandmother Ruth Asawa (1926–2013), who now has a retrospective at SFMOMA.

Lanier’s art show runs through September 1, 2025.

A woman with long blonde hair stands in front of a wooden bench and a wall displaying pixelated portraits, including one with the name "Lilli Lanier" beside it.Photo taken on 26 Jul 2025. Photo by Jay A. Martin.

Here, Lilli Lanier stands in front of a portrait she made of her grandmother, Ruth Asawa (1926–2013). Asawa was the legendary Japanese-American artist who crafted her wire sculptures in her Noe Valley home studio. Lanier’s portrait is based on a photograph of Asawa by groundbreaking Bay Area photographer Imogen Cunningham. A closer look at the Asawa portrait shows a fraction of the folded paper squares Lanier used to make the art. For the portrait, Lanier folded over 10,000 pieces of origami in 20 different shades of color. “Grandma Ruth taught me the origami fold when I was a kid,” Lanier recalls at the show. The Asawa portrait was just one of 10 origami portraits she is showing at the cafe.

A grid of origami squares and triangles in various shades of blue and turquoise is arranged in an orderly pattern.A detail of the portrait.
Photo taken on 26 Jul 2025. Photo by Jay A. Martin.

A woman wearing glasses looks at framed mosaic portraits of famous figures displayed on a white wall in an art gallery.Photo taken on 26 Jul 2025. Photo by Jay A. Martin.

The origami portraits are all of famous people, like basketball great Stephen Curry, iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Lanier makes portraits of people who speak to her own values, like building community. Each portrait is a challenge for the artist to break down an image to its simplest elements and then build it up with colors, shapes, and lines. In her artist statement on line, Lanier says, “The end result is a design inspired by everyday life.”

Lanier’s “Origami la Virgen de Guadalupe,” is made up of 20,000 pieces, all hand-cut and folded. Lanier assembled la Virgen just this year with a unique black-and-white origami portrait of a young Grandmother Ruth. On the black-and-white work, “I really enjoyed making this one,” Lanier wrote in a January 2025 Instagram post.

Two framed artworks hang on a white wall: one depicts Our Lady of Guadalupe in vibrant colors, the other shows a grayscale portrait of a person resting their chin on their hand.Photo taken on 26 Jul 2025. Photo by Jay A. Martin.

Deep into the artist reception, guests remained engaged with Lanier’s portraits. Below, Victor Young, Sr., discusses the Asawa portrait of 15,000 pieces with his daughter, Silvia Yuen. The Asawa portrait signature piece is the featured portrait of the show.

Two people stand in front of a table with food, conversing beneath a large monochrome portrait of a woman displayed on the wall.Photo taken on 26 Jul 2025. Photo by Jay A. Martin.