About the Artist

Marie Conner is a Portland based sculptor and mixed media artist and non-fiction writer. She received a BA in Liberal Arts, Sculpture and Writing and an MA.Ed in Postsecondary Educational Leadership and Policy, both from Portland State University. 

At the end of her undergraduate program she embarked on a year long residential gallery project, Tethered Cord, in the basement of her home in S.E. Portland. Tethered Cord exhibited work from emerging contemporary artists/art students to give them the opportunity to gain experience responding to non-traditional gallery spaces. 

She has exhibited and published throughout Oregon, and gained immeasurable experience as the Director of Littman and White student run professional contemporary art galleries at Portland State University.

Marie is currently an MFA candidate in the Low Residency Visual Studies program at Pacific Northwest College of the Arts in Portland, Oregon.

ARTIST STATEMENT

No matter where we come from or are headed, there are certain universal truths in being human. My work lives in the world of memories that linger in the peripheral, fragments of time told through memoir and images. It is intensely personal yet strives to address sociological and cultural commonalities such as the search for home, and whether that is place or spirit. Materiality and material exploration in relation to context are paramount in my practice, and I use whatever medium best expresses the concept I am trying to address at the time.

Recurring themes of tension are often represented in my work with stringing and stretching of various materials to address the way we feel stretched thin and pulled in various directions, as well as to speak to barriers and connections between people.

In my recent work I have been focused on the world of the body and how it functions, and how our manufactured environment mirrors that natural structure. Parts of the body are loaded with inherent meaning and fragmenting body parts work to draw attention to the issues often associated with that isolated area.

Up to this point my creative exploration has largely been fueled by own relationship with how nerve damage from Spina Bifida has affected my physicality and my desire to come to terms with this.