Wendy Maruyama
“Metalworking was fun and interesting, but the scale wasn’t of interest to me anymore, working on a tabletop. Making a tabletop was more exciting to me- working large.”
‒ Wendy Maruyama
Furniture maker, artist, and educator, Wendy Maruyama (1952‒) was born in La Junta, Colorado, and received her bachelor of fine arts from San Diego State University in 1975; a Certificate of Mastery from Boston University’s Program in Artisanry in 1978; and a master of fine arts from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1980. She has been a professor of woodworking and furniture design for over 30 years. Currently, Maruyama is head of the Furniture Design and Woodworking program at San Diego State University, where she has taught since 1989. Previously, she headed the woodworking and furniture programs at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California, from 1985 to 1989. She also taught and eventually headed the woodworking program at the Appalachian Center for Crafts, in Smithville, Tennessee, from 1980 to 1985.
Maruyama’s work is found in many public collections including the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, Australia; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Tennessee State Museum, Nashville; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York CIty; the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, North Carolina; the Oakland Museum of California; the Mingei International Museum, San Diego, California; and the ASU Art Museum, Arizona State University, Tempe. She is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the 2010 California Civil Liberties Public Education Grant; the Japan/US Fellowship; several National Endowment for the Arts Grants for Visual Artists; and a Fulbright Research Grant to work in the United Kingdom. She and her husband, Bill, and their two dogs live in San Diego, California.
