Portia Munson 1, Flower Mandala Baroque Photo Contemporary Feminist Art Digital Photograph Print, 2003

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Portia Munson (American, b. 1961), "Flower Mandala Baroque", pencil signed, dated, 2003 and titled by hand along lower margin, Artist … Read more Portia Munson (American, b. 1961), "Flower Mandala Baroque", pencil signed, dated, 2003 and titled by hand along lower margin, Artist Proof. 19 X 14 (sight), 28 X 22 inches (frame) Portia Munson (born 1961) is an American visual artist who works in sculpture, installation, painting and digital photography, focusing on themes related to the environment and feminism. Her work includes large-scale agglomerations of mass-produced plastic found objects arranged by color, as well as small oil paintings of individual domestic found objects, and digital photographs of flowers, weeds and dead animals found near her home in upstate New York. Portia Munson was born in Beverly, MA in 1961. She has a BFA from Cooper Union (1983), and an MFA from Mason Gross School of Art (1990), Rutgers University. She attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1987). She has been awarded residencies at institutions including Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, MA); Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, NY); and MacDowell Colony for the Arts (Peterborough, NH). Munson has taught at New York University, Yale School of Art, Vassar College and SUNY Purchase. Portia Munson is a contemporary feminist artist, her focus on female sexuality and the environment through her sculptures, paintings, photography, and installations draws focus on the past and future experiences living as a female in today’s society. Portia’s large-scale installations of amassed pink plastic objects emphasize the way consumer culture has marketed to females as well as the environmental consequences by repeatedly acquiring such goods. Portia Munson is a visual artist who works in a range of mediums including photography, painting, sculpture and installation and focuses primarily on environmental and cultural themes seen from a feminist perspective. Munson's work has been shown in major public and private exhibition spaces since the early 1990s, when she had a "White Room" exhibition at White Columns (NY 1993) and was included in the "Bad Girls" show at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (NY 1994). In 2015, she create a large-scale light box installation at the Bryant Park subway station for New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority. A permanent installation by Munson has been on view at the Fort Hamilton Parkway station since 2012. In 2011 Munson had a solo show, "Color Forms," at Mass MOCA (North Adams, MA). In 2016 she created a large piece that hangs in the main concourse of Albany (NY) International Airport, and her work was included in the "Nature Pops" at Wave Hill (Bronx, NY) and in "Pink Noise" at Girls' Club foundation (Ft. Lauderdale, FL). Munson has had more than 20 solo exhibitions, most recently "Reflecting Pool" at PPOW Gallery (NY 2013), "Dear Mother Nature" at Mills Gallery, Central College (Pella, IA, 2015), and "Little Suns Hollow Bones" at Cross Contemporary Art (Saugerties, NY, 2015). Her work has also been in dozens of group exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, including the "Radical Kingdoms" at Mandeville Gallery, Union College (Schenectady, NY, 2017); "The Tide Is High" at Colonel's Row, Governors Island (NY, 2016); "In Plain Air" at Art Omi (Omi, NY, 2016); "The Female Gaze" at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (Philadelphia, PA, 2012); "Botanica," at Hunterdon Art Museum (Clinton, NJ, 2010); "At the Edge," Portsmouth Museum of Fine Art (Portsmouth, NH, 2010); "Garbage Picker: Contemporary Artist as Chiffonier" at Affirmation Arts (NY, NY, 2008); ARS 95, Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki, Finland, 1995); and "The Ornament of the Masses," Kunsthallen Brandts Klaedefabrik (Odense, Denmark, 1998). Her work is in numerous private and public collections, including 21C Museum (Louisville, KY), Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Lyndhurst, OH, and the U.S. Department of State. Portia Munson's work has been featured in books including Post-Petroleum Design by George Elvin (Routledge, 2015) and New York's Underground Art Museum: MTA Art & Design by Sandra Bloodworth and William Ayres (Monacelli Press, 2014). See less