Tools As Art: The Hechinger Collection

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Maria Porges, Table Saw, 1983
ceramic
16 in diameter

Maria Porges completed a B.A. in art history at Yale University in 1975, and in 1979 she earned an M.F.A. in sculpture and drawing from the University of Chicago. She also attended Grinnell College in Iowa, and the San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited her sculptures, drawings, prints, and ceramics widely, including shows in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Reno, Nevada, and New York. She is also a frequent contributing editor to several art publications and was curator of the traveling exhibition "The New Narratology: Examining the Narrative in Image/Text Art." Irony and postermodernism come together in Porges's work, where the recurring themes of tools and books serve as metaphors for knowledge. At times narrative and at other times conceptual, her imagery plays with the inherent meaning, association, and structure of her found objects. Her titles often explore the inverse: the idea of words and language as tools.