MARY JANE PARKER

A mixed media artist based in New Orleans, LA, Mary Jane Parker’s recent work is concerned with the ways that our bodies - from marks acquired at birth to scrapes and cuts that define our life’s story -serve as historical records. She has also explored studies of hysteria and outward displays of inward emotional turmoil.

Another focus of recent works has been objects serving as stand-ins for memory, ritual, and obsession. “My work also includes collections of objects, like perfume bottles and lace doilies, objects that have a function but are beautiful and precious at the same time,” Parker explains. “The objects, cast in solid glass and no longer useful, serve as a reminder of one’s life with each item standing for a space in time or a significant event.”

Parker’s work has been shown nationally and internationally and is included in the permanent collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, the LSU Museum of Art, and the Center for Book Arts in New York, as well as in numerous private collections. She was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship in 2007; a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship in 1990 and 2001, a National Endowment for the Arts/Southern Arts Federation Award for Excellence, and an NEA Independent Study Fellowship. She currently serves as the chair of the Visual Arts Department at the New Orleans Center for Creative where she is also on the faculty.

Artist Member since 2018

Master of Fine art (printmaking & drawing), Illinois State University

Bachelor of Fine Art (painting & drawing), Louisiana State University

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