Rita Maas is a visual artist whose work examines the complexities and effects of living amid a constant barrage of information. Through simple methods and gestures, she seeks understanding, solace and connection that speak to our shared humanity and common experiences. Working within predetermined systems she embraces chance and disorder that often employ reductive forms to create conceptually driven work.

BIO

Rita Maas is a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow and has participated in residencies at ChaNorth in Pine Plains, NY, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Hollins University, where she was the 2022 Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence. That residency coincided with a solo exhibition at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum. She has also served as a visiting professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Her work has been recognized nationally, and most recently awarded Third Prize by Samantha Friedman, curator at the Museum of Modern Art in the annual Works on Paper exhibition at the Long Beach Island Foundation. Her work was  selected as a finalist for The Print Center’s 95th Annual and inclusion in the exhibition Fit to Print. She was also a finalist for the Rhonda Wilson Award and participated in FRESH 2019 at KlompChing Gallery in Brooklyn. She was awarded an Honorable Mention from the INFOCUS Sidney Zuber Photography Award and was named “One of the Ten Most Exciting Photographers I Learned about Last Year” by curator Dr. Rebecca Senf. Maas’s work has been exhibited widely and is held in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; the Griffin Museum of Photography; the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum; and Archive 92.

In addition to her studio practice, Maas works closely with the board, director and curator at the Hammond Museum in North Salem, NY, contributing to exhibition development and the cataloging of the museum’s collection created and collected by the founder,  Natalie Hays Hammond.

Born in New York, Maas received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts. Soon thereafter she opened and managed her own commercial food photography studio collaborating with editorial and advertising clients receiving numerous awards over her decades long career. She later earned her MFA in Visual Arts at Lesley University College of Art and Design. 

Maas lives and works in the Hudson Valley, NY.