Diana Guerrero-Maciá

Professor, Fiber and Material Studies, Painting and Drawing

guerrero-macia.com

Diana Guerrero-Maciá has been teaching at SAIC since 2001. She took her sabbatical during the 2022 Academic Year.

Diana Guerrero-Maciá creates collage-based hybrid paintings that allude to cultural references including the sampling of databases, the structural forms of modernism, and the pictorial space of medieval art. Her material choices and processes are combined in a way that demonstrates that art is an essential part of the life of the mind and the body. The haptic moments of touch revealed in her materials, compiled over years, and folded into colorful abstractions, hold time. Color and decoration, in all their expansiveness and elusiveness, are integral to Guerrero-Maciá’s work. As a child of exile, she recognizes that history, form, and identity are ever-changing, and her art champions transformation.

Guerrero-Maciá is a United Artist Fellowship Nominee, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award winner, Illinois Arts Council Fellow, MacDowell Colony Fellow, Phillip Morris Foundation Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts. Her work has been exhibited at Artpace, San Antonio, TX; The Bronx Museum of the Arts; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Elmhurst Art Museum, IL; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Kohler Museum of Art, Sheboygan, WI; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. She has also created multiple public art commissions for the Public Art Fund, NYC, and the City of Chicago.

Guerrero-Maciá is represented by Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, and Traywick Contemporary, Berkeley, CA.

Education

1992 MFA Painting, Cranbrook Academy
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
1988 BFA Visual Art and Art History, Villanova University

Notable Classes Taught:

Advanced Painting
To Dye For
The Unpainted Picture

More info:

Guggenheim Fellow
John Michael Kohler Center
MacDowell

Sabbatical Reflection

I’ve been thinking a lot about the politics of art and who gets to make it, teach it, and consume it. The sabbatical structure is a unique privilege unprecedented in this capital economy, one feels the pull to make something radical out of the experience. As it was, like any other year, my radical behavior happened at a slow pace, in the studio, with a daily practice. I spent my year making watercolors, collages, and large works of art and showing occasionally. This happened alongside tending to my families’ daily domestic needs, reading, visiting Cape Cod, and the Smithsonian Museums in DC. Most importantly, I took many long walks with my dog and bicycle rides with my kid. I went to several artist’s residencies to find much needed solitude and nature to work and teach at Haystack Mountain School of Craft in coastal Maine, MacDowell in rural New Hampshire, and Penland School of Craft in the mountains of North Carolina. Additionally, I visited Graduate Painting & Textile programs to lecture about my art and work with students at University of Wisconsin Madison, Tufts University, and University of Wyoming. I have a solo project curated by Carla Acevedo Yates of the MCA Chicago, opening at the Armory in New York City, in early September. If you happen to be in NYC go check it out.

-Diana Guerrero-Maciá, Professor, Fiber and Material Studies, Painting and Drawing