Mary Zeran

I’m a third-generation woman artist who grew up in a family where making things was just part of life. Some of my earliest creative memories are sewing with my grandma during long car rides—tiny stitches, big imagination.

As a kid, I was always creating—drawing, building, crafting anything I could get my hands on. That love for making led me to study art in college, where I majored in jewelry and expanded into sculpture, painting, and ceramics.

Today, I work across mediums, guided by color, texture, and emotion. Whether it’s a swirling abstract painting or a piece of hand-built sculpture, everything I make is rooted in the joy of process and the belief that art can reconnect us to our inner vibrancy.

My work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, IA, U.S. Cellular Center, Cedar Rapids, IA, Harvard Business College, Boston, MA, and United Fire Group, Los Angeles, CA. Artist Residencies, and public commissions include Oregon College of Arts and Crafts Residency, and a 2% for the Arts Purchase Prize from the Visual Arts Commission in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Her work is included in the book "Chunghi Choo and Her Students", published by Arnoldsche, S...

I have my BFA and MFA in art from the University of Iowa.

Unmoored, Gilded Pear Gallery, Cedar Rapids, IA
2022
The Ancient Healing Properties of Clay, Paper, Plastic, and Wood, Gilded Pear Gallery, Cedar Rapids, IA
Mapping the Intangible, Iowa Ceramics Center, Cedar Rapids, IA, curator Karin Rutkin
2021
Dance Party, Gilded Pear Gallery, Cedar Rapids, IA
Beauty Seeker II, Project Art, University of Iowa Hospital, Iowa City, IA
Happy Zone, Art Center Burlington, Burlington, IA
2020
Mission Happiness, Gilded Pear Gallery, Cedar Rapids, IA
2020 Mary Zeran: 10 Years, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, IA