Mary Brodbeck was born in Hastings, Michigan in 1958. She graduated from Michigan State University with a BFA in Industrial design in 1982, and worked as an Industrial Designer in the West Michigan furniture industry for a dozen years – many of her designs hold US patents – before shifting to image making in the 1990’s.
Mary studied Japanese woodblock printmaking in Tokyo with Yoshisuke Funasaka on a Japanese government BUNKA-Cho Fellowship in 1998 and obtained her MFA from Western Michigan University in 1999. She was an Isle Royale Artist-in-Residence from August 11th to August 30th, 2000. Her landscape woodblock prints have received critical acclaim in both Japan and the United States; the Autumn, Sleeping Bear Dunes series, created 2006-2008, is in the permanent collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Mary exhibits her work widely and teaches Japanese woodblock printmaking through public workshops, college and university courses, and private lessons. Her latest major project, Becoming Made, a documentary film about the creative process, is “Highly Recommended” by Video Librarian and is available online and on DVD.
