Author name: Mara Held

Born in 1954 in New York, Held moved to the highlands of Guatemala in her early 20s to study the art and ancient language of the Quiché people. She received her undergraduate degree from CUNY - City University of New York and an MA from Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles, California before moving back to New York in the 1980s. She taught essay writing at the college level and became a full-time artist at the age of 35; her studio is located on an old dairy farm in the picturesque Hudson Valley that has been in her family since the 1960s. Institutions that have collected her work include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The New York Public Library; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; The International Artists' Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel; and Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. Mara Held’s work has been profiled by The New York Times, Elle Décor, and The Brooklyn Rail.