Born and raised in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, Mari Omori is a multi-media artist, art educator, and curator who received her MFA from UCLA and BA from California State University Northridge. She is currently a Professor of Art at Lone Star College-Kingwood, Kingwood, TX, a position she has held since 2002, teaching Design, Drawing, and Painting.
Her awards include the Mino Culture Art Project AIR, Mino, Japan (three months), in 2008 in conjunction with her Sabbatical Research Leave with the International Faculty Exploration Grant from Lone Star College Systems, and the Palm Beach County Cultural AIR Grant in 2007 culminating a solo exhibition at the Morikami Museum, Palm Beach, Florida. Her recent Artist-in-Residency experiences are Hilmsen, Germany in 2012 (five weeks), and COLLAGE: Art for Cancer Network with MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, on-going since 2007.
Her works have been widely exhibited internationally in Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Thailand, as well as in one person and group shows in the US, California, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Texas. Omori’s curatorial projects include “Plurality: Paperwork” (LSC-Kingwood, 2012), “Washi 5: International Handmade Paper Exhibition”) LSC-Kingwood and LSC-Montgomery, 2010), “Kyomei: Resonance” (Poissant Gallery, Houston, 2007), “crossroads: aisa/America” (Galveston Arts Center, 2006), and “affinities” (Heritage Gallery, JP Morgan Chase, Houston, 2005).
Omori was the featured artist in “mari omori” at the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts, Spring, TX, in 2011, “mothers & daughters” at the Bosque Gallery, LSC-Cy Fair, celebrating Women’s History Month in 2010, and “akari kami mori: illuminare” at the College of the Mainland Art Gallery, in the same year. Omori has been invited to numerous collaborative projects with organizations in Houston such as, Dominic Walsh Dance Theatre, “Uzeme,” 2012, the Menil Collection, “the Artist’s Eye” 2011, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, “Art Teacher Workshop”, 2009 and 2007, and the Asia Society Texas Center, “First Look at Festival”, 2012. She has created films, videos, and self-published books, and is currently showing installations, “Knitting Time” at HCC Southeast, and “Movements” at Russ Pitman Park, Bellaire, TX. She is scheduled for group shows during the summer, 2013, “Out of Texas,” Salzwedel, Germany and “Paper Cuts” at M Square Gallery, Houston, TX.
