Mari Novotny-Jones, United States

Mari Novotny-Jones has been a member of the Mobius Artists Group in Boston since 1980. Her original performance work includes both solo and collaborative pieces. Her most recent international credits include participation in the various Mobius art exchanges in Macedonia, Croatia and Poland. She participated in Festival Forfest, Czech Republic, Kicevo Artist Colony, Macedonia, the Harta Festival in Monza, Italy, The 6th Annual Performance Open in Chengdu, China and Eruptio 4 Festival in Transylvania and Navinki 2007 in Belarus. Her most recent local works include Shrinekeepers for 2007 Cyberarts festival as part of a collective of six women performance artists and Harvest for the Mobius International Festival in 2006. She has also appeared in Mobilize 2008 and Contaminate, an International Artist’s Festival, Boston. In December 2007 she participated with the Present Tense, in a Boston/Chicago exchange, Rough Trade. In 2008 she traveled to Java to participate in the 4th Perfurbance Festival and to Bangkok for the 10th anniversary of Asiatopia. Novotny-Jones is on the faculty of the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts where she teaches Performance and CORE foundations classes. She is a recipient of a 2000 Tanne Foundation Artist Award for excellence in the arts. In 2001, she was awarded an Emerging Artist/Humanitarian Fellowship from the Boston Cultural Council for her performance and teaching work. The Museum School awarded a Faculty Enrichment grant for her work in Macedonia in 2003. Mari also holds a M.A. in independent studies from Lesley University, Cambridge Mass. Her thesis paper is entitled, The Nature of Transformation in Performance and Ritual.