About
Maria returned to making ceramics after a thirty year interruption, having been sidelined by a career in interactive technology. A computer graphics pioneer, her first computer piece “Nancy Reagan Takes the Subway” produced in 1982 at the Alternate Media Center at NYU, under a grant from the NEA, received wide recognition as the first interactive comic strip and led to a twenty-five year career as an illustrator and art director. Maria worked on early Internet experiments for AT&T and RCA Labs, then focused on educational software development for clients that included Children’s Television Workshop, PBS and Bank Street College of Education.
Previously she was known for her multi media exhibition Maria Manhattan’s The Box Lunch - a large exhibition with feminist overtones that honored 39 women of dubious distinction. The Box Lunch was a kind of SNL version of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party.
She is a member of the Pastel Society of America, her work has been exhibited at the New York Historical Society, Galerie Valerie, the Provincetown Museum of Art, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Berkeley Museum, Parsons Gallery and the School of Visual Arts, where she taught for fifteen years.
Maria is a ukulele aficionado. She sang with The Pointless Sisters in San Francisco. Her radio show, The Hudson Cafe can be heard on WGXC in Hudson, NY.
Links
Maria Manhattan's "The Box Lunch":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1sEAD5X1Hg
http://mariamanhattan.com/TheBoxLunch.htm
The Hudson Cafe on WGXC.org