Virginia Maksymowicz
Talks Too Much uses a plaster cast of my face. Letters of the alphabet—frozen in mid-stream—spew out of my mouth. Women are denigrated for speaking up all over the world. But nevertheless we persist.
Garden of Earthly Delights was created for an architecturally embellished room covered with decorative molding. Paper casts of my face positioned into ornamental medallions become invisible, part of the wall. Paper fruits and vegetables forced into female mouths are paired with words used to describe the characteristics of those fruits or, allegorically, characteristics of women. These mouths, silenced by “compliments,” struggle to speak but they refuse to shut up.
Virginia Maksymowicz, born 1952 in NYC, is a sculptor living in Philadelphia. She received a BA in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College, CUNY and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego.
Maksymowicz has exhibited her work at Franklin Furnace, Alternative Museum, Elizabeth Foundation, Grey Gallery, and the Michener, Woodmere and Delaware Museums, and in galleries throughout the U.S. and abroad. She was a recipient of an NEA fellowship in sculpture and her artwork has been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, New York Newsday, The New Art Examiner and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her series, The History of Art, appears on the cover of The Female Body (University of Michigan) and she was recently featured in Amtrak’s national magazine. She has thrice been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome, an artist-in-residence at the Powel House Museum, Philadelphia, and a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center.
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