Maren Hassinger brings together industrial and natural materials to articulate the relationship between humanity and the environment. Studying dance since the age of five, Hassinger shifted focus to visual art and sculpture while in college. Hassinger grew up in Los Angeles, where she pursued graduate studies in fiber arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. There, Hassinger employed wire rope in her installations, sparking a decades-long exploration of the material. The completed wire-rope sculptural forms often mimic natural phenomena and organic vegetation.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Hassinger sought alternative spaces to showcase her sculptures and installations in Los Angeles, alongside artists Houston Conwill, David Hammons, and Senga Nengudi. Hassinger collaborated with Nengudi to activate Nengudi’s performance-based sculptures with movement. In the mid-1980s, Hassinger moved to New York City to participate in the Studio Museum’s Artist-in-Residence program, where she continued to explore outdoor spaces and nature as inspiration and metaphor for the human experience. A dedicated educator, from 1997 through 2017, Hassinger served as the director of the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hassinger earned her BA in sculpture from Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, and her MFA in fiber arts from the University of California, Los Angeles. She received numerous awards, including grants from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Gottlieb Foundation, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for the Arts, among others. Hassinger has exhibited across the United States and abroad, and, in 2018, Hassinger completed eight site-specific sculptures in Marcus Garvey Park as part of the Studio Museum’s inHarlem initiative.