For Maria, living, interpreting, and making are endlessly intertwined in a cycle of art and daily life. She creates functional ware for everyday life. Maria intuitively paints the surface of her pottery and these gestural elements in return inform her sculptures. Within the bounds of pottery, she seeks to elevate mundane rituals into extraordinary moments. Through her work she seeks to reconcile the impressions of her memory, recreating forms, textures, and ideas that have touched her. Ordinary, absurd, and oddly familiar objects explore the relationship between line, color, texture, and form.
As an educator, she aspires to provide her students a balanced experience of the technical and conceptual possibilities of ceramics. She has a commitment to education based upon sincere desire of seeing students succeed.
Maria earned a Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics from Temple University, Tyler School of Art and a BFA from the University of South Florida. Born in Kansas, she lived through her late teens in Venezuela and currently resides in Philadelphia. Teaching artist by day and ceramicist by night, when Maria is not throwing or coil-building pots in her basement studio she works for the Clay Studio's outreach program as a community engagement teaching artist.
