Born in 1932, Marilyn Henrion is a lifelong New Yorker and a graduate of both Cooper Union and Fordham University. She is represented in the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, and her works are included in five major museums and numerous corporate and private collections internationally. After graduating from Cooper Union in 1952, she married fellow artist and classmate Edward Henrion, a marriage that lasted 64 years until his passing in 2016, and which produced four children. During the 1950s and ’60s, Marilyn and Ed were immersed in the art and literary scene of the era, attending meetings at the 8th Street Club where the abstract expressionists gathered, holding poetry salons at their Greenwich Village apartment where the “Beat” poets of the day would read from their work. Marilyn performed in Claes Oldenburg’s “Happenings” and at the newly-founded Judson Poets Theatre on Washington Square. In 1989, after raising four children and retiring from a twenty-year career as Associate Professor/Career Counselor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Marilyn was able to devote full time to her own creative life. Although she started as a painter in 1952, it was textiles that spoke to her in a way that paint never did. Upon resuming her creative work in the 1970s, textiles became her medium of choice. After becoming a member of the Noho Gallery in New York in 1999, she had a solo exhibition every two years until 2020, when she relocated to Texas, each time presenting a new body of work. In 2022, at the age of 90, Henrion relocated her studio to Plano, Texas, to spend time near family. While the subject matter of her work had always been focused on urban geometry, now, in its place, are scenes where nature and man-made structures interact, as well as those that focus on the natural world itself in all its glory.
"Marilyn Henrion: The Evolution of a Fiber Artist 1932-2019", which documents her creative journey, can be seen on YouTube.
Statement As a lifelong New Yorker, my aesthetic vision has always been deeply rooted in the urban geometry of my surroundings, from the earlier geometric abstractions to the more recent mixed media works. I am particularly interested in the co-existence of past and present, especially in architecture and other man-made structures. The presence of the human hand upon the landscape expresses our eternal yearning for immortality, evidence that says “I was once here”. Much as Edward Hopper did in the 20th century, I synthesize and transform the “facts” of the material world to reflect my experience of a particular place, striving to illuminate beauty in unexpected places...a subway entrance, a doorway, a fire escape, a rooftop. While my original medium was paint, I discovered early on that textiles spoke to me in a way that paint never did, and my medium of choice became textiles. These mixed media works, derived from my digitally manipulated photographs, may take the form of collage or hand quilted works that animate the surface and reinforce the presence of the human hand.
