Portfolio
Virginia Mahoney was awarded the 2025 Marlene and David Persky Present Tense Prize from ArtsWorcester, recognizing an artist whose work exemplifies new practices, artistic risk-taking, and excellence in execution.
Made of parts and scraps of my destroyed artwork and former teaching documents--these ethereal, obscured, altered forms-- feel akin to the misty thought processes of our brains.
Writings from past sketchbooks or memories on strips of old paintings are woven into food net. This contemplative act remembers, honors, and preserves, while processing uncertainty, change, and ruminations.
These specter-like forms, which evolved out of crushed and reclaimed old work, elicit the sensations and subtexts of the corporeal, layered complexity of human experience.
These shield-like forms emphasize the nature of the barriers we invent while alluding to the multiplicity of ways we create or experience separation from one another literally and symbolically.
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Embodying self-doubt, uncertainty, background questions, thwarted progress, or second-guessing, the handwritten words on ceramic tags piercing these vests hint at sensations from all of the above.
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From shards of past works, new objects are remixed, each decision influencing the next. The fragments are sorted and classified while narratives are re-imagined. Linear elements suggest intuitive connections to the past work.
Dickeys present a false impression. Collars adorn, identify, and restrict. These dickeys and collars evoke or embody states of mind, situations, expectations, and memories.
Combining imagery of the body and education reform matrices, these works focus on the disparity between reality and data, emphasizing that individual uniqueness confounds rigid systems and prescriptive standards.
Archetypal forms of containment and offering, pitchers, bowls, and kylixes examine body iconography, mythology, expectations, and memories, as they question systems, expectations, and parameters.
Recent installations from "Fragments" and early work in installation using handmade ceramic units, emphasizing contemplative making, variation within a form, and time.
Extras
Coming soon! Curatorial projects, writing.
Studio
Coming soon! Studio views, process videos, works-in-progress, and more from "the space for maybe."
