Meet the Artist: Mare Blocker

Meet the Artist are casual, unstructured opportunities to interact with the artists in their exhibitions. Stop by the gallery and meet exhibiting artist Mare Blocker!

Guest name:

Mare Blocker

Guest bio:

Currently featured in a solo retrospective exhibition here at BIMA, Storytime with Mare, Seattle native Mare Blocker comes from a family of artists and makers. Her first job, at age five, was painting trees in the backgrounds of her grandfather’s landscape paintings, which they sold at the Seattle Center and Pike Place Market. She likes to say she grew up in the Seattle Center’s Fun Forest. She had a little bed under the platform of the Bubbleator where she napped in the afternoons while “working” in her grandparents’ shop. She’s had many adventures—coaching a swim team, owning a biker bar in Arizona, and running a small rural library in a log cabin in the mountains of Idaho. Now, she’s back in Seattle, working in the studio she and her dad built. Mare has been making books since 1976 and founded The MKimberly Press in 1984. She has published 69 limited edition titles, over five hundred unique artist’s books, and numerous broadsides and prints. Her work is included in more than 100 museums, libraries, and public collections internationally, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the University of Washington Special Collections, the Library of Congress, and The Cynthia Sears Artists’ Book Collection at BIMA. Mare has received numerous publication awards, including commissions from the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Center for Book Arts in NYC.

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Host or Publisher Bainbridge Island Museum of Art