Congratulations Wendy Maruyama — 2021 James Renwick Alliance Masters of the Medium Awardee
Each year the James Renwick Alliance recognizes Masters of the Medium in five fields of endeavor: outstanding artists in the fields of ceramics, wood, glass, metals, and fiber. This prestigious biennial award given by the JRA Craft has honored some of the most significant artists in American Craft.
Wendy Maruyama — Furniture Maker, Artist, Professor“I think craft in general is a very generous and communal group of people, more so probably than the painters and the sculptors, I think. Particularly woodworkers, they’re extremely willing to give a hand”
Maruyama JRA Award
Wendy Maruyama 1978
Maruyama at work
Wendy Maruyama is one of the first two women to receive a Masters of Fine Arts in Furniture Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology, NY and has been a professor of woodworking and furniture design for over thirty years, serving as the head of the Furniture Design department at San Diego State University. While her early work combined ideologies of feminism and traditional craft objects, her newer work moves beyond the boundaries of traditional studio craft and into the realm of social practice. Her contemporary bodies of work focus public attention on wildlife poaching, and commentary as her experience as a Japanese-American.
Maruyama82 Mickey
Wendy maruyama wild LIFE Project
Maruyama89 Urban Amazon
Wendy Maruyama work in progress
Maruyama Salk Project
Maruyama90 Jungle Cabinet
Wendy’s work can be found in the collections of Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Dallas Art Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Tasmania, Australia, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco, the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, and more.
The James Renwick Alliance is an independent national non-profit organization that celebrates the achievements of America’s craft artists and fosters scholarship, education, connoisseurship and public appreciation of craft art. If you are not already a member, we invite you to become one.
More information about JRA can be found on their website.