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Mary Wright offers workshops through the Wright Organic Resource Center. Mary's art work can be viewed by appointment in her studio, and is also available for purchase. Inquire by telephone for studio visits and for purchasing art work: 818.591.0218 |
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Saturday, JULY 20th from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM |
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Mary Wright's "Art on the Land Show" |
MARY'S BIO
Mary
Wright's simple, clear and organic art has always been inspired by nature.
Feathers, shells, trees and mottled rock formations hiding deeper abstract
universes stimulate her work.
Mary was born and reared in Southern California where she received her
teaching degree from UCLA. Following the Korean War, she petitioned
the U.S. Air Force to teach art to the children of American personnel
in Japan. While in Japan, she was also disciplined in Sumie painting
under master Reiko Saito.
In 1960 Mary returned to the U.S. to teach in the Los Angeles School
District. There she met and married architect Eric Lloyd Wright, grandson
of Frank Lloyd Wright, with whom she has two sons.
In addition to teaching art and painting from their mountaintop home
in Malibu, Mary and her family are hosts to many philanthropic, environmental
and social fundraising events.
They have a non-profit organization, Wright Way Organic Resource Center,
that conducts workshops in organic and sustainable building practices
as well as large community gatherings at equinox and solstice. It also
sponsors workshops in organic gardening, art, poetry and music. All
events have scholarships for inner-city youth.
The 1999 and 2002 World Festivals of Sacred Music, inspired by the Dali
Llama, has honored this land with large multicultural music events.
There they celebrated Eric and Mary as 'Local Heroes'.
Weekly Native American sweat lodges and Buddhist practice inform Mary's
work and enrich her Earth connection.
She is a long time environmental activist, five years on the board of
the Ballona Wetlands Land Trust. She's also worked with elementary school
students, creating giant puppets to animate indigenous tales to awaken
the community to protect these disappearing resources.
For seven years Mary has led workshops in poetry and art with the Noetic
Institute. One of her favorite lines from Rilke...
"Earth, is this not what you want...invisibly to become one of us?"
Mary's teaching philosophy is expressed well by one of her inspirational
teachers, Matthew Fox... "The only hope Mother Earth has for survival
is our recovering creativity - which is of course our divine power.
Creativity is so satisfying, so important, not because it produces something
but because the process is cosmological. There's joy and delight in
giving birth." A great influence in her youth was Girl Scouting. Many
two week treks in the wilderness of the Sierra Nevada mountains opened
an essential door. "My work reaches for images that reflect the archtypal
in Nature forms. I like to be still and open my senses to wildness,
places where the human realm has not yet entered. It is here that I
can receive glimpses of who I most truly am."
Of her work, architect Arthur Dyson says: "Her watercolors are a stream
of experience that emphasizes sensitivity to the kind of hidden structures
that rest beneath the distracting glare of ordinary appearance...she
has found a method to bring calm to the surface so that we may look
for the riverbed." (Arthur Dyson, architect, Fresno, CA. Recent Dean
of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.)
Mary's work is currently showing in Taos at Terrie Bennett Gallery and
Topanga Art Gallery near Malibu, California. There is also an annual
summer showing of work set inventively in the natural setting of her
home; organized around the four elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water.