Moira Marti Geoffrion Biography
Moira Marti Geoffrion was born in Olney, MD, but soon after moved to southeastern Ohio. Growing up on a large farm in the area, she first developed a profound interest in the natural environment which has served as a reoccurring inspiration throughout her artistic career. Working in an interdisciplinary spectrum of the art-making process, she has been able to incorporate elements of sculpture, painting, fibers, and performance into her pieces. All of her artworks, whether they are sculptural or 2-dimensional, are deeply conscious of the natural environment and incorporate the artist’s own personal insights relating to the correlation between human physicality and its surrounding environment.
Geoffrion interweaves ideas relating to her own family history into her work, but always leaves the subject matter of the pieces open enough to allow for a myriad of interpretations. Many of the works use surrealistic subject matter to allude to a sense of natural movement and the way in which a relationship between the human body and the cycles of mother earth is formed.
Throughout her expansive career, Moira Geoffrion has been exhibited in more than 200 museums and galleries found in the United States, various European countries, Australia, and Russia. She has had solo exhibitions in the Snite Museum of Art (catalogue 1987), the Tucson Museum of Art (catalogue 1989), the Cullity Gallery inPerth,Australia(1996), the Sonia Zaks Gallery in Chicago,IL(1998), the Gallery Centella i nTucson, AZ, and the U. KY Gallery (Visiting Artist 2010). She has also been involved over 190 group exhibitions including; the Warner Gallery in South Bend, IN (1987), Zaks Gallery in Chicago, IL (1987), Rousse Museum of Art in Rousse, Bulgaria (2005), the Northern Arizona University Museum of Art in Flagstaff, AZ (2005), Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, IN (catalogue 2006), the Municipal Museum of Art in Gyor, Hungary (catalogue 2007), and the BIS Altes Museum in Moenchengladbach, Germany (2007).
Her art can be found in 30 museum, private and corporate collections in the United States, Europe and Australia. Geoffrion has received many grants including Fulbright, Mellon, IAC, ACA, and TPAC grants. She has also had artist residencies in Switzerland, Bulgaria and Australia.
Over the past two decades, Geoffrion has been commissioned to make over a dozen public artworks including a temporary site sculpture for the Connemara Conservancy in Dallas, TX(1990), the 1st Ave. Road and Bridge project in Oro Valley, AZ (2007), an 18-painting commission for the Neuro-Sciences Center of Southern AZ, Tucson (2008), and the Rancho Vista Park and Ride Station in Oro Valley, AZ (2009). Her public and private commissions can be seen throughout the Midwest, Oregon, Oro Valley and Tucson, AZ, and in Australia.
Moira Geoffrion became a MACAA Board member in 1994. She lectured at the International Sculpture Conference in London, England and served as Panel Chair at the South Eastern College Art Conference in Richmond, VA in 2010. She has been featured in over twenty publications throughout her career which include; Arts Magazine (1985), Sculpture Magazine (1995, 1999), and Architectural Review (2009).
Her parents founded the Marti College Prep School from which she graduated. She received her BFA degree from the Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts after which she and her husband served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, West Africa. They returned to the United States to attend Indiana University in Bloomington, IN.
It was there that Moira founded the Mandalla Pre-School where she taught Art, Theater, Music, English, Math and French. Moira and her husband returned to Africa with their daughter for 10 months for field research in East Africa in Malawi. They then settled in Edwardsville, IL and Moira completed her MFA in Sculpture at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. In 1974 they moved to South Bend, IN where Moira had their son and began teaching wood and metal fabrication, drawing, figure modeling and African Art History at Notre Dame University and built a foundry for the Art Department.
Moira’s art was represented by the Zaks Gallery in Chicago until 2005 and she exhibited in New York and throughout the United States. In 1986 the family moved toTucson, AZ where Moira was hired to be head of the Art Department at the University of Arizona, and she also taught sculpture. Geoffrion retired from teaching in 2011, and is presently living in Tucson, Arizona. The Mark Sublette Modern Gallery in Tucson, Arizona represents her work.
