About the Artist

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Maryann Webster was born in San Francisco and grew up in north ern California. She received an MFA and a Research Fellowship award from the University of Utah where she now teaches. Recent exhibitions of her work have been in galleries in New York, Chicago, Berkeley, Santa Fe, and Portland. 

She works with porcelain and glaze-like enamels that withstand extremely hot temperatures. She likes to imagine these durable materials outlasting our civilization. 

ARTIST’S STATEMENTS 

THE FRONT COVER: Destroying Angel 

(center panel from triptych) 

I am interested in ancient icons and their naive style of expression. Ezekiel refers to fierce angels with eyes on their wings, and also great wheels called thrones orophannim, which seemed to transport these beings. This angel is poised on a mushroom-shaped cloud with a radiation symbol at the center of the wheel. The planes represent the B-29 bombers that carried atom bombs. Nearby Wendover, Utah, was the top-secret take-off point for the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. Growing up with the culture of constant nuclear threat and bomb testing in Nevada have greatly influenced this piece. 

THE BACK COVER: Mutant Garden Diptych 

Adam and Eve represent pure, untouched nature. In this instance, however, the animals around them are sickly or altered in some way. Behind the two figures are seen a nuclear power plant and the mush room-shaped clouds of atomic bombs. In one corner an angel witness es the precarious scene, while Adam and Eve seem unaware of the destruction. Most of the background is covered with 22-karat gold leaf, which is intended as a metaphor for radioactivity. Historically, a gold leaf background represented the holy light of heaven. I have included a nuclear power plant because radioactive contamination is considered a serious threat to nature and human life. Utah is targeted by the federal government as the site of the world’s largest nuclear waste dump at Skull Valley, fifty miles from the Wasatch Front.