Mary Ann Michna grew up in a southwest Chicago suburb in the late 50's and early 60's where she spent her youth dreaming up creative projects for herself and the neighborhood kids.  A few of these creative pursuits included digging for buried treasure in a nearby vacant lot, building club houses and organizing a museum in the family garage.

 

The painitings and photographs are her observations of a disappearing American landscape.  Her artwork has been exhibited at the Drawing Center in New York, the Jersey City Museum, the Butler Museum of American Art, the Swope Art Museum, Indianapolis Art Center, the Bicentennial Art Center and Museum, Evansville Museum, USI Gallery of Art, New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, the Women's Institute and Gallery, Stutz building Gallery, Arts Illiana, Woodburn and Wescott Gallery, Purdue University, Indiana State University and the Bomb Shelter Gallery at Indiana University Bloomington.

 

Her education includes an MFA  in painting and photography from Pratt Institute in New York and a BA from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

 

She has worked many years as a photographer/videographer with patrons/clients including the Indiana State Library, WFYI television Across Indiana, Indianapolis Historical Society Traces Magazine, Indiana State Museum, Art Spaces, Inc., Sheldon Swope Art Museum, and the City of Jersey City, New Jersey.

 

Currently she works out of her studio in historic New Harmony, Indiana.