COMMON READING SERIES: Artist Marilyn Lysohir

Join local artist Marilyn Lysohir on Thursday, February 6 from 4:00-5:30 pm, to learn about the history of chocolate and how it has influenced her artistic practice. Lysohir’s first job was at a candy store in Pennsylvania and she took a break from her art career to start Cowgirl Chocolates in Moscow, ID in the mid-1990s. Lysohir’s life-sized ceramic work “Bad Manners (Version 2)” is currently on view as part our 50th anniversary exhibition, “Your Collection: Faculty Remix”, on view January 14 through June 28, 2025.

Come for the talk, stay for a bite of complimentary chocolate and a coupon to Moscow Candy, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Moscow Candy is co-owned by Lysohir and Carise Skinner.

About the Artist: Marilyn Lysohir was born in the rust belt town of Sharon, Pennsylvania, and earned a Bachelor’s Degree at Ohio Northern University 1972. She moved to Pullman, Washington, to attend graduate school at Washington State University and earned her MFA in 1979. She moved across the Idaho state line to Moscow and began her art career, breaking ground as a young, female ceramic sculptor. As a ceramist in the early 1980s, Lysohir had to push against the boundaries of being labeled a craft artist. She was one of the unique artists of her generation to see the possibilities of ceramics as a sculpture medium and earned the reputation as one of the leading ceramic artists of the 1980s. Her first solo exhibition was in 1984 in Los Angeles, where she showed a major ceramic installation, “Bad Manners (Version 1)”. Lysohir was adjunct professor at WSU-Pullman from 1979-1985 and has served as visiting art professor at numerous universities including Kansas City Art Institute, University of Idaho, and New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Her list of accolades includes lectures, workshops, and two Kohler Factory Arts in Industry Program residences.

LOCATION | The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU is located in the Crimson Cube (on Wilson Road across from Martin Stadium and the CUB) on the WSU Pullman campus.