Elsa Hoffman was born and raised in the Piedmont of North Carolina. She studied studio art at Oberlin College, assisted sculptor Patrick Dougherty, and designed and built her own functional wood cabinetry and furniture. In 2012, Hoffman discovered a love of metal. For more than a decade she has honed her welding and cutting skills, gaining acclaim for her loose and gestural work, using a plasma cutter as a drawing tool. Hoffman’s large scale metal cutouts have been exhibited in galleries, botanical gardens, train stations, homes and businesses in North Carolina, in the Julian Robertson Collection in New York City, and on a facade to a University of North Carolina research building in Lilongwe, Malawi. She works out of her shop in Mebane, NC.