OM.2026.030 - Marlene Weisman - USA

OM.2026.030 - assemblage on book board - 9 x 6 inches -  Saved Souls - no.24, Fanny and Fenton Filmore - Marlene Weisman - USA

 Marlene Weisman is an acclaimed Brooklyn, New York-based visual artist, animator, and graphic designer. Working primarily out of her studio in the Gowanus/Red Hook artist community, Weisman bridges the gap between commercial pop media and fine art. She relies on a witty, nostalgic, and often feminist lens to reconstruct everyday commercial materials into surreal commentary on consumer values. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

An overview of her background, historic East Village ties, and artistic series includes:

TV Background and Graphic Design Roots

• Saturday Night Live (SNL): Weisman possesses a background in the high-pressure world of live television production. For several seasons in the early 1990s, she served as an in-house graphic artist for NBC's Saturday Night Live, where she and her art department peers shared a production Emmy Award in 1992. [1, 2]
• Pop Culture DNA: Her career spans design for the New York music industry in the 1980s, network broadcasts, and web design for massive early internet providers like Time Warner. This continuous flood of commercial graphic design deeply informs the humor and layout of her art. [1, 2, 3]

The East Village Era and MoMA Collection

• Club 57 and Keith Haring: In her early career, Weisman was deeply embedded in the legendary 1970s and 1980s downtown counterculture scene. She participated in underground exhibitions at the historic Club 57 that were curated by iconic street artist Keith Haring. [1, 2]
• Permanent MoMA Collection: Her early experimental Xerox transfer art from this countercultural era was acquired by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for its permanent study collection. Her work was later prominently re-exhibited in MoMA's acclaimed retrospective, Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978–1983. [1, 2]

Artistic Mediums and Core Portfolios

• Redefining 21st-Century Collage: On her official site Marlene Weisman Art, she showcases diverse series constructed from bingo cards, scrabble blocks, and vintage print advertisements. A notable ongoing venture is her "Super Deep" series, which invents a method to hand-cut and overlay vintage kitsch 3D lenticular images into high-depth surrealist arrays.
• "Saved Souls" Series: This series utilizes discarded 19th-century antique tintype photographs. By surrounding these anonymous, ghostly faces with vibrant paint and collage ephemera, she visually invents entirely fictitious "lives lived" for people lost to history. [, 2, 4, 5]

Recent Shows and Public Footprint

• Her work continues to maintain a strong presence in New York galleries, showing at the Islip Art Museum, BRIC Media House, and the NARS Foundation Gallery. She hosted an episode of MoMA’s "In the Studio" digital educational series to share her mixed-media and Xerox transfer methods with international audiences.