Mary Larsen

Miami-based artist, Mary Larsen, was raised in New York City where she developed an early interest in art while attending an art magnet high school. She studied printmaking and filmmaking at Hampshire College and after a successful career as an art director, completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Florida International University, graduating Magna Cum Laude.Mary works primarily in mixed media and altered books. Her self-referential work uses abstract landscapes to evoke psychological states and memory. The process determines the outcome. She also creates altered books through a process of obscuring and revealing parts of the book; rubbing out and making marks, tearing, and sewing, erasing one history, and replacing it with another, a new history emerges only to disappear. The books deliberately shun a narrative, revealing the subconscious thought process through a series of pages incorporating found poetry.

Mary’s work has been exhibited in New York City, San Francisco, San Juan, Miami, and Kyoto. Her work is in corporate and individual collections in New York, Miami, and San Juan. Her altered books are in the special collections at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, the University of Miami, Florida International University, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. As a teaching artist, she was a recipient of the Ellies Art Teacher Travel grant in 2019.