A mini-retrospective of the career of Marcia Widenor, tracing the ways she has innovatively used paper, fiber, and other organic, natural, and found materials to create two and three dimensional environments that appear simultaneously fragile and confident, welcoming and challenging, ultimately producing a kind of quiet visual poetry.

For over four decades, Marcia Widenor has worked as a sculptor, printmaker, papermaker, and installation artist. Born in Illinois, Widenor moved to New York to study art history at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie before settling in Sea Cliff, where she raised her children and had her first career as a social worker. Although Widenor had been making art casually since childhood, it was not until after retiring from her social work career in the 1980s that she put her efforts into making art full time. She studied under several important Long Island artists and went on to produce a vast body of work focusing on the fragility and resilience of the natural world, beauty and spirituality, and the significance of community.

She has been the subject of multiple solo exhibitions in the United States and exhibited internationally in France, South Korea, and Iceland. She has been featured in numerous group shows, many of which took place on Long Island alongside her fellow local artists. Collaboration with the Long Island arts community was a significant aspect of Widenor’s practice. She was commissioned by Stony Brook University to create stage designs for theatrical and dance performances and invited to curate exhibitions at Long Island art spaces including Hillwood Art Museum in Brookville and Gallery North in Setauket. Her work is included in many public collections, including Bates College Museum of Art (Lewiston, ME); Queensborough Community College Museum (Bayside, NY); Islip Museum of Art (East Islip, NY); the White House Collection (Clinton Administration); and Godrej and Boyce (Bombay, India). Widenor’s work is also held in many private collections, including those of her many friends and neighbors in Sea Cliff.

Now 94, Widenor is no longer making new art, but her prolific artistic oeuvre remains a testament to her fragile and intricate interpretations of the world around us.