Marilyn Henrion

Born in 1932, Marilyn Henrion is a life-long New Yorker and a graduate of Cooper Union. She is represented in the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. her work is included in museum, corporate and private collections internationally.

After graduating from Cooper Union in 1952, she married fellow-artist and classmate, Edward Henrion, a marriage that lasted 64 years until his passing in 2016, and which produced four children. During the 1950’s and ’60’s, Marilyn and Ed were immersed in the art and literary scene of the era, attending meetings at the 8th Street Club where the abstract expressionists gathered, holding poetry salons at their Greenwich Village apartment where the “Beat” poets of the day would read from their work. Marilyn performed in Claes Oldenburg’s “Happenings” and at the newly-founded Judson Poets Theatre on Washington Square. Sunday afternoon visits to friend Joseph Cornell and babysitting by Tom and Clare Wesselmann (then students at Cooper Union) were part of their lives.

After retiring from a twenty-year career as Associate Professor/Career Counselor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1989, Marilyn was able to devote full time to her own creative life. Although she started as a painter in 1952, it was textiles that spoke to her in a way that paint never did. Upon resuming her creative work in the 1970’s, textiles became her medium of choice. Initially working in the “art quilt” genre, the labor-intensive process of hand quilting added a meditative quality to the aesthetic challenges of creating a work of art that appealed to her.

Over the years, Marilyn’s work has continually evolved, with a new body of work being created for a solo exhibition every two years since 1999. The current mixed media works still incorporate the textiles and hand stitching that characterized her earlier work. In 2022, at the age of 90, Henrion relocated her home and studio to Plano Texas. As an octogenarian with unflagging energy, the artist still spends most of her time in the studio, creating new works for her next exhibition as well as for site-specific commissions.