Featured Member Artist: Virginia Maksymowicz

VIRGINIA MAKSYMOWICZ
3719 Lancaster Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Home: 215/387-9706
Work: 717-358-4574
vam@tandm.us
http://tandm.us

Artist’s Biography

Virginia Maksymowicz (b. 1952, New York City) is a sculptor currently living in Philadelphia. PA. In 1973, she received a B.A. in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and an M.F.A. in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego. She has exhibited her work at the Franklin Furnace, Alternative Museum, the Elizabeth Foundation and Grey Gallery in New York City; the Michener and Woodmere museums in Philadelphia; and college, university and nonprofit galleries throughout the U.S. and abroad.

She is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in sculpture (1984), and over the years has been honored with numerous other grants and awards. Her artwork has been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, New York Newsday, The New Art Examiner and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her series, The History of Art, appears on the cover of The Female Body, published by the University of Michigan Press
in 1991.

She has been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome (2006), an artist-in-residence at the Powel House Museum in Philadelphia (2006- 2007), and a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center (2007).

Maksymowicz has been a visiting professor of art at a variety of colleges and universities throughout the United States including Oberlin College in Ohio, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and the Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia. She is currently Associate Professor of Art at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

For nearly 35 years, Maksymowicz has been developing a type of imagery that addresses cultural and political issues in a nontraditional, but understandable, form. A hybrid of sculpture and painting, the work is usually displayed as wall relief, with figures or objects sometimes juxtaposed with narrative texts. Maksymowicz has a particular interest in feminist issues and she often focuses on the particular circumstances of a range of women, both in past history and in current times.

January 2011