Mary Jane Parker’s work combines printmaking techniques with other media including drawing, water-based media, wax and glass. Inspired by the foliage that blankets the New Orleans landscape, she pairs meticulously rendered pattern with the figure and elements of the human presence. Concepts of fragility, compulsion and ritual are recurring themes in her work. Parker is a native New Orleanian. She received her B.F.A from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and her M.A. and M.F.A. in Studio Art from Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. Parker has received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship, a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship for two years, a National Endowment for the Arts/Southern Arts Federation Award for Excellence, an NEA Independent Study Fellowship, a Surdna Foundation Arts Teacher’s Fellowship and several project grants from the Louisiana Division of the Arts. Parker’s work is part of the permanent collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, the LSU Museum of Art and the Center for Book Arts in New York and numerous private collections. She is represented in New Orleans by Arthur Roger Gallery and is a member of the Baton Rouge Gallery. In addition to her active studio practice, Ms. Parker chaired and was a faculty member of the Visual Arts Department at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.