María de Mater O’Neill

B.F.A., Cooper Union School of Arts and Sciences, NYC, 1984.
Doctorate in Design Practice, School of Design, Northumbria University, United Kingdom, 2014.

Twenty-five years of experience in art and design education. Award winning painter and designer. Author of Practice-Based Doctoral research “Developing Methods of Resilience for Design Practice”, a design model to improve real time resilience thinking for designers under stressors. She is a Fulbright Specialist Roster candidate in Design as well a awarded of the Presidential Federal Design Achievement Award (United States)  and the Iberoamerican Design Biennial (Spain). She belong to the Peer Review Collegium of She Ji — The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation. Published by Elsevier in collaboration with Tongji University and Tongji University Press, China.

She has participated in numerous exhibitions as a painter, among them: Objetivos Móviles, curated by John Hitchcock and Alicia Candiani, Buenos Aires, 2008; ¡Impresionante!, curators Harper Montgomery and Deborah Cullen, International Print Center, NYC, New York, 2004;Only Skin Deep, curator Coco Fusco, Online Exhibition, International Center of Photography, NYC, New York, 2003-04; De Lo Que Soy/Of What I Am (an exhibition of self-portraits by women from Latin America and the Caribbean, February 07 through May, 12, 2003), Lehman College Art Gallery, NYC; Interrogating Diversity, Betty Rymer Gallery, School of the Institute of Art of Chicago, Chicago (2002); Flight of the Falcon, Girifalco Fortress, Cortona, Italy (2001); El arte en Puerto Rico a través del tiempo, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (2001); Latin Caribbean, Cuba , Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, MOOLA, Los Angeles, CA (2000); The Richness of Diversity Contemporary Puerto Rican and Mexican Artists, Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (1997); Caribbean Visions: Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, traveling exhibition, Center for Fine Arts, Miami (1995 a 1996); Latin American Women Artists 1915-1995, Milwaukee Art Museum, traveling exhibition, Phoenix Art Museum, The Denver Art Museum, The National Museum of Women in the Arts (1995-96); and, Otro País; escalas africanas, organized by the editor Simmon Njami of the Parisian magazine Revue Noire, traveling exhibition, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Mallorca, Spain (1994).

At the beginning of 1999 was invited by the Center of Innovative Printmaking and Papermaking, Rutgers University, New Jersey to give lectures and to make the lithography «Clasifícame ésta» as a resident artist. With this work she becomes part of the delegation from Puerto Rico to the exhibition Argentina Contemporary Lithography, 1999: 4th Edition in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In 2000 her work as a painter was discussed in the book: “Images of Ambiente: Homotextuality and Latin American Art 1810-today” by Rudi C. Bleys (Continuum Press, London) and a profile was written by Luisita Lopez Torregrosa in the The New York Times, Arts and Leisure section (“Puerto Rican Art Moves Outward, and More Inward“, March 11, 2001).

The Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico presented an exhibition of O’Neill’s painting career (1983-2006) in February 2 until April 22, 2007, guest-curated by Dr. Elaine King.

In 2008, She finished collaboration piece “Painting for a Specific Floor” with architect André Mignucci at Centro Cultural Casapoli, Península de Coliumo, Chile.

O’Neill is an early adopter of technology. Created, launched and founded the first cultural e-zine in the Latino community (1995-2005)- El cuarto del Quenepón was one of the first ten Spanish e-zines on the Internet and in the first 100 in the world. The project lasted 10 years and involved a voluntary, collaborative and interdisciplinary collective effort that was a precedent of blog publishing. In 2004 it was included in the exhibition Trienal Poligráfica de San Juan, América Latina y el Caribe, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, San Juan.