MARY DRITSCHEL
was born in 1934 in New
York City and has resided in the Chicago area for the past 15 years. From
1978 to 1986 she lived in São Paulo, Brazil, taught at the University
of São Paulo and was twice a participant with the Brazilian
group in the International Bienal of São Paulo. Her extensive
exhibition record includes numerous solo museum and gallery exhibitions. In
1994 Dritschel was invited to participate in the Bienal’s Seculo XX exhibition
of 20th century Brazilian art. Her work in sculpture and video art is documented
in the first comprehensive survey of Brazilian art and is included in private
and public collections in both Brazil and the United States. She has traveled
widely in Brazil and has been invited numerous times to return as a visiting
artist. In 1992 she was awarded a Senior Scholar’s Fulbright grant to
lecture at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
While living in Brazil she taught at the School of Communications and Art
in the University of São Paulo. Upon her move to Chicago in
1987 she was invited to teach in the School of the Art Institute’s Foundations
program. In 1996 Dritschel was an artist-in-residence at the University of
Campinas, São Paulo, where she conducted a month long workshop
on installations for specific sites and had a solo exhibition at the university
gallery.
In the past Dritschel has conceived, curated and produced eight major international
cultural exchanges between American and Brazilian artists. Among the exhibitions
which followed her move to Chicago was the American contemporary quilt exhibit,
Quilting Partners, produced for the Illinois/São Paulo Partners
of the Americas. Initially these quilts were shown at the Museum of São
Paulo in Brazil and subsequently brought to the Northern Illinois University
gallery in Chicago. In that same year of 1990 she produced the exhibition
of text and image, Let the Work Speak for Itself, under the auspices of the
Chicago Women’s Caucus for Art which was exhibited at the Northern Illinois
University Museum and Gallery in DeKalb and Chicago. In 1995 the Cedarhurst
Museum in Mt. Vernon, Illinois invited Dritschel to guest curate her traveling
exhibition, Light Weight Works, for which five American artists were invited
to create individual installations that would fit into five United Parcel
Service boxes.
In 1999 her work was chosen to travel for two years throughout Illinois in
an exhibition that represented Illinois women artists. This same year she
opened two solo exhibitions; one at the Harper College Gallery in Schaumberg,
Illinois and the other at the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago. In 2001
her work has been included in the invitational exhibition, Con/Textuals, that
was held at the Chicago Cultural Center. It comprised of Chicago artists working
with text in art. Exhibitions in 2002 are scheduled for the Crown Gallery
in the Chicago Lake shore campus of Loyola University, Chicago and the Elmhurst
Museum of Art in Elmhurst, Illinois.
