Baker Artist Portfolios

Honoring site-specific needs of each community, Maura Dwyer designs vibrant, collaged, visual stories that weave together histories, personal narratives, and political issues of our time to imagine a better future together. Maura’s public art and teaching artist practice is a collaborative process that supports collective reflection and action. When invited to dive deeper into a topic to better understand the nuances of a narrative, history, or place, she transforms ideas into tangible visuals that give justice to the power of people’s stories. 

Maura completed her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2012, and is currently pursuing a dual Masters program in Regional Planning and Community Development with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA). Most recently, she wrote and designed a 12-minute long visual performance called Ruminations on Red Geographies, and performed at the Black Cherry Puppet Theater in Fall 2022. This past summer she taught crankie workshops to 3rd - 5th graders at schools throughout Baltimore City where students wrote and illustrated collaborative crankies that helped process their transition from virtual learning to in-person school. Directly before the pandemic, she performed a 17-minute long spoken word-based crankie titled "We Call is the Red Line", at the Creative Alliance's annual Crankie Fest. 

Maura has had opportunities to travel and perform her work along the east coast at crankie festivals in Vermont, Pittsburg, and Virginia. Along with this visual storytelling and performance work, Maura has also maintaind a mural and teaching artist practice with Arts for Learning, teaching mural workshops across schools in Maryland, and working with communities in Baltimore to create collaborative pieces of public art. She was awarded three Light City project grants from 2017 - 2018, and was accepted into the Sanctuaries DC Artist as Organizer Residency Training program in 2018. In 2019, she worked with the Neighborhood Design Center to strengthen her community engagement methods and develop temporary public design projects in collaboration with local organizers working to secure community control over land. 

Currently Maura works as a cultural arts programmer for the Station North Arts District while balancing freelance illustration, creating art with organizers, designing original performances, and faciliating mural workshops throughout Maryland.