Maria Amalia Wood

In 2021, The Bubbler launched a new residency at Pinney Library. Called Pinney Studio, the space welcomes artists who work for longer periods of time and develop a series of projects.

As an artist working with textiles, paper-making, and community-focused storytelling, inaugural Pinney Studio artist-in-residence Maria Amalia Wood invited the Madison community to make an abstract handmade paper horizon with her. Informed by journeys, passage of time, transitions, transformation, sunsets, and migratory bird formations, Maria led participants in community workshops to make marks that celebrate their own personal life journeys. As an immigrant, Maria was especially interested in making space for the exploration of others’ immigration journeys throughout her residency.

Wood invited two teen studio assistants, Itzayana Miranda-Pesina and Noa Delgado-Lopez, to participate in the residency. She has taught them art since they were little and wanted to give them the opportunity to use their creative and social skills in a community art project.

Wood holds a Bachelors in General Art with a minor in Visual Communications from Judson University and an MFA in Textile Art and Design from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For the past four years, she has been creating paper and textile objects that refer to memories of lived experiences. While constantly honing her ability to intelligently compose, the artist has developed a process for manipulating the wet pulp that allows her to work freely, creating marks and passages that evolve organically through a repetitive process of building an image with layered, ripped, painted, and collaged forms resulting in complex surfaces that carry rich color and texture passages.

Wood also exhibited alongside J. Leigh Garcia in the exhibition Soñe Una Milpa in 2017.

mariaamalia.com

Return to the residency archive.