Rita Maas is a visual artist who works with photography, drawing and printmaking to playfully construct conceptual based imagery. Working within predetermined systems she embraces elements of chance and disorder often adapting reductive forms. How information is received, filtered and retained are persistent themes of her practice, examining the spaces where slippage and illegibility occur.

BIO

Rita Maas is a 2023 NYCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Printmaking/ Drawing/ book Arts. Her work is inclueded in the 2024 Nor'Easter at the New Britain Museum of Art celebrating artists of the North East. She has served as the 2022 Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA that coincided with a solo exhibit at the Eleanor D Wilson Museum.

Maas was named a Finalist in The Print Center's 95th Annual by David Campany and Larissa Goldston in 2020 and was included in the exhibit “Fit to Print” at The Print Center curated by Dr. Ksenia Nouril and Lisa Blas. Her work was Finalist in the Rhonda Wilson Award and shown in the Annual FRESH 2019 exhibition at KlompChing Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. In 2017, 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.

Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston TX, The Center for Creative Photography in Tucson AZ, The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester MA, The Eleanor D Wilson Museum at Hollins University, Roanoke VA and Archive 92.

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 photogtaphy studio in New York, 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.