Faculty

Profile

Born in Morgantown, WV, 1972. Martin Mazorra received a BFA from West Virginia University in 1994, and MFA from American University in Washington D.C in 1996. He has been invited to speak at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Hui Press, Maui, HI, University of Northern Illinois, Auburn University, Savanna College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Amherst College, and the University of Kentucky. Martin was awarded a Marie Walsh Space Program studio in 1999 and was a recipient of a 2007 NYFA Fellowship in Printmaking, Drawing and Artist Books. My prints combine pictorial narratives and humor, a preference that comes from a rich cross and sub-cultural source. I am a son of a Cuban exile in West Virginia, and grew up submerged in Appalachian economics and pre-Castro nostalgia. Both my Hispanic father and rural community used levity to convey their oral histories and lighten personal tragedy. I have chosen the medium of woodcut because of its tradition of social satire, its rawness and immediacy. I work in a range of different scales, from small letterpress books, 18" x 24" posters, to large 4' x 8' woodcuts printed on canvas. Carefully hewn images of cuckoo clocks, birds, lottery cards, icons of country music, superhuman thugs, day laborers, honky-tonk angels, and back-road car races, speak to my roots in the South, my family, and popular culture at large. This iconography is often combined with text exploring social issues such as class, apathy, and excess.

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