Marianne McGrath
Artwork Information
“Knots”, 2026
Recycled cardboard, black oxide, wild clay dust, wire
DV
$10,000
My work is a contemplation on material, process, and object metaphors that often juxtaposes the medium of clay with industrial, reclaimed, or found materials to create installations and sculptural works that often speak of landscapes lost. I often employ my materials in unconventional ways to accent the metaphorical capacity of each to communicate a sense of memory, ephemerality, and loss. Based primarily on forms and processes from the agrarian landscape of my childhood and the actual tangible process of object making, I present my objects and installations as physical tributes to a memory, perhaps marking a landscape, a memory, or an idea that I may have experienced and which no longer exists.
The work included in this exhibition, "Knots", was first developed during a residency at Museum Bruunshaab Papfabrik, Viborg, Denmark, curated by Danish curatorial team Driftskontoret.
Artist Statement
Born into the fifth generation of a farming family, Marianne grew up on the Oxnard plains in Southern California. She studied Conservation Bioolgy and Ceramics at The University of Colorado at Boulder, and received her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin. After teaching in Texas for almost ten years, she returned to California, joining the faculty at California State University Channel Islands in 2017 as an Assistant Professor of Art and Head of Ceramics. Currently, she is Chair of the Department of ART and Art History and an Associate Professor of ART at CSUCI.
Marianne has exhibited extensively throughout her career, and has upcoming solo exhibitions in Austin, Texas and Viborg, Denmark. Her work is in numerous public and private collections across the county. She has been the coordinator and juror for NCECA's Projects Space Exhibition numerous times, and currently sits on the Board of Directors for the Santa Paula Art Museum. Marianne has participated in several residency programs including Medalta, in Medicine Hat, Alberta, and OxBow in Saugatuck, MI. She lives in Ventura, CA with her daughter and husband.