Wendy Maruyama

Furniture maker, artist, and educator Wendy Maruyama has been making innovative work for over 40 years. While her early work combined ideologies of feminism and traditional craft objects, her newer work moves beyond the boundaries of traditional studio craft and into the realm of social practice. Wendy Maruyama has been a woodworking and furniture design professor for over 30 years. She is among the first two women to graduate with a Master's in furniture making from Rochester Institute of Technology. Maruyama has exhibited her work nationally with solo shows in New York City, San Francisco, Scottsdale, Indianapolis, Savannah, and Easthampton. She has exhibited internationally in Tokyo, Seoul, and London. National and international permanent museum collections hold Maruyama's work, including the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, England), Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, USA), Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery (Launceston, Australia), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, USA), Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, USA), Museum of Art and Design (New York, USA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, USA), Mint Museum (Charlotte, USA), and Fuller Craft Museum (Brockton, USA). Maruyama is a recipient of several prestigious awards, including the California Civil Liberties Public Education Grant, 2010; several National Endowment for the Arts Grants for Visual Artists; the Japan/US Fellowship; and a Fulbright Research Grant to work in the UK. In 2024, the American Craft Council awarded her the Gold Medal for Consummate Craftsmanship. Maruyama's first solo museum exhibition, Wendy Maruyama: A Sculptural Survey, is currently on view at the Fresno Art Museum, California, through January 5, 2025.