Marianne Desmarais

Marianne Desmarais’ work has been featured in Ceramics Monthly and Pelican Bomb, with collaborative work appearing in Azure and FiberArts magazines. Recent solo shows in New Orleans include gather at Staple Goods Gallery, Polymorphs at Cole Pratt Gallery, and samples + patches, an exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center. She has participated in group shows at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Antenna Gallery, and The Front in New Orleans. Her work has traveled internationally with the Imago Mundi collection for the Benetton Foundation and has been shown in venues in New York, Toronto, and Detroit. In 2016, the CAC presented her sculpture Glyphic Figure in a limited edition as the Silver Circle Sculpture.
The work engages material and structural behavior to explore the relationships between parts in a system or an assemblage. A ruleset developed in response to a curiosity leads through process to mark making, complexity, and the emergence of new formal properties. This evolution of operations reveals a shifting space between the flat and the dimensional, between liquid and solid states, and between layered moments in time.
Born in Gulfport, Mississippi and raised in Florida, Marianne Desmarais lives and works in New Orleans. She holds Masters of Architecture I + II degrees from Tulane University and Cranbrook Academy of Art respectively, and has studied abroad at the Edinburgh College of Art. In addition to studio art, Marianne Desmarais is an architect and an educator at the Tulane School of Architecture.