Winter 2018 EditionAlumni & Friends Magazine
Mary Manusos: Art as response to our world
A lifetime spent responding sensitively and vigorously to the world around her, Ohio University Professor Emerita of Art Mary Manusos taught printmaking to generations of budding artists in the Seigfred Hall print shops.
Daniel King, MFA ’15 | December 14, 2017
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Her dedication to teaching and her art fostered the printmaking program and inspired students imagining their own future as working artists.
OHIO’s College of Fine Arts and the School of Art + Design celebrated Manusos’ work with several events in September. The collaboration launched States of Being , a solo exhibition in September at the Trisolini Gallery in Baker University Center. It also hosted a week-long open studio workshop called Alumni Inkahoots, which brought alumni artists from across the U.S. to the Athens Campus to work with current students on creating new works of art. Finally, Manusos delivered a keynote lecture for a day-long printmaking symposium that featured more than 25 alumni artists. Each artist shared stories of their own about this master printmaker’s influence, mentoring, and friendship.
“The works I create are influenced by the marriage of my past, my opinions about our current affairs, and our future,” Manusos said. “I make references to these states in my works more and more. East meets West, past versus present, now versus later, soft versus hard reality.”
The photo essay that follows captures Manusos’ time on the Athens Campus in September. All photos courtesy of Daniel King, MFA ’15.
States of Being, recent work by Professor Emerita Mary Manusos, was on view in Trisolini Gallery in early September. The exhibition was part of a series of events presented by the printmaking program and OHIO’s School of Art + Design.
Manusos described this series of prints as architectural forms, created using the woodblock printing process on hand-poured paper. The work in the exhibition represented her “own personal, temporal response to life, using layers of liquid colored paper pulp, paint, and printed images.”
Professor of Printmaking Art Werger introduced his colleague and long-time friend to faculty, administration, students, and visiting alumni gathered on September 22, 2017, at the States of Being exhibition in Trisolini Gallery in Baker University Center.
Manusos shared her unique artistic process and lifelong passion for printmaking while discussing her newest work: art that is informed by an interest in Latin American cultures in San Diego and abroad.
Familiar faces and new friends filled Trisolini Gallery to celebrate Manusos at the exhibition reception. Students, faculty, and visiting alumni crowded into the space to hear from Manusos.
Listen to WOUB Public Media’s interview with Manusos, where she shares stories about her work, a pivotal, mid-1970s trip to Mexico that altered her artistic vision, and about the root changes in professional art-making she’s witnessed over time.