Regeneration

Marcia Wolfson Ray was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. In 1993 she received a fellowship to attend the Mount Royal  Graduate School at the Maryland Institute College of Art where she earned her MFA.
She taught art in the Baltimore City Public School System.
While in graduate school she started using organic materials such as bamboo, phragmites, dog fennel, hibiscus, straw, marsh elder and pine wood to construct her sculptures.
Some of the galleries that have shown her work in include- the University of Connecticut, University of Maryland, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum, the Pennsylvania College of Technology, Montpelier Arts Center, Rockville Arts Place, the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk,Virginia, Arlington Arts Center in Virginia, Loyola College, Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania.
The inspiration for her work comes from nature, its forms, rhythms and patterns, including the physical manifestation of working outdoors- the light, temperature and season of the year which she feels reflects the sense of mystery at the center of life. She collects most of the materials herself from places as varied as the vacant lots in Baltimore to the fields and marshes on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

“Micaela de Vivero’s exhibit highlights the artist’s experiments with a wide assortment of non-traditional media. As you enter the room, you are surrounded by transformed objects that evoke an innovative laboratory. The artist’s unconventional and repurposed materials speak to dreamlike encounters, while also exploring experiences of daily life. She is most interested in the relationship between observer and installation — how the viewer becomes a part of the work by navigating through the space.”

From article by Sherée Lutz, November 2016

Professor Vivero has exhibited her work nationally in the US, in Canada, in Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Ireland, Finland, Austria, Spain, France, Portugal, Bulgaria and Armenia. She has been an artist in residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE (2001), at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland (2003), at the Chretzeturm in Stein am Rhein, Switzerland (2005), at Koli Ryynaanen in Koli, Finland (2007), at the Rondo Marienmühle in Graz, Austria (2007-2008), at the Acoss Foundation in Yerevan, Armenia (2011), at Frankfurter Kunstverein in Germany (2013), at Camac in Marnay-sur-Seine, France (2016), Institute for American Universities in Aix-en-Provence, France (2017), at Museu de Lanificios in Covilhã, Portugal (2018) and at PINEA – Linea de Costa in Rota, Spain (2019). She has been a multiple times Durf Grant recipient, a Unesco-Aschberg grant recipient and has gotten international grants to support her artist residencies.