Janet Maher was born and raised in Connecticut and had a long and varied career in the arts, including in New Mexico and Maryland. After many years of teaching, she retired as Professor Emeritus of Art from Loyola University Maryland. During the COVID pandemic she and her husband relocated to Westerly.

Maher has been exhibiting her work since 1975 and has received numerous awards. She regularly exhibits regionally and nationally. She is also the webmaster for ACGOW. Explaining her gratitude for ACGOW she said, “I appreciate being a member of Artists’ Cooperative Gallery of Westerly, with its entirely different shows every month. This keeps me motivated to continue challenging myself to work steadily and set new aesthetic goals.”

A Signature Member of the National Collage Society, Maher has chosen to work at this stage of her life primarily in mixed media collage or assemblage. Her two-dimensional works usually include some kind of pencil drawing to deepen the visual connections within her compositions. Maher states she loves a challenge, “I set problems for myself,” she says, “like setting rules for a visual game I then play out to completion. I can’t know what the result will be until it arrives.” In her June feature at ACGOW she will show works from three types (among others) of collage that she has been doing—either beginning with hand-marbled papers, book-arts-related materials, or mass-produced ephemera. Her work can be viewed at her website www.circlegardenstudio.com and her Instagram@circlegarden_studio.

See her ACGOW Artist's Page HERE.