Mary
Lou Asaro
Bio
Mary Lou Asaro has
spent many years working in arts administration. Her degree from Coe College
in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in Economics and Business Administration was combined
with her interest in the arts as she pursued her career. She served as director
of the Galesburg Civic Art Center in Galesburg, Illinois, as well as being
arts coordinator in community education for High School District 214 which
included six high schools in Illinois. Mary Lou wrote grants for arts programming
for the Peoria County superintendent of schools in Illinois, designed web
sites and served on numerous arts councils and boards.
A Midwesterner from Illinois, Mary Lou moved to Arizona in 1999 with her husband of over 30 years, who served as city manager of Prescott until his passing in 2003.
Since then, Mary Lou has returned to her love of art. It had been decades since she had done painting or drawing. She has taken numerous art courses at Yavapai College as well as printmaking workshops in the Southwest. The courses she has taken include printmaking, digital photography, Photoshop, color theory and digital printmaking and she has exhibited prints at the Raven Cafe, Prescott Fine Arts Association Gallery, Mountain Artists Guild, and the Yavapai College Gallery, winning "Best of Show" in the Fall 2007 Student Juried Exhibition. Mary Lou also received the "Best of Show" award in Prescott Fine Arts Gallery's "Ex Libris" exhibit in April, 2009.
Traveling to many
countries including Mexico, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Lithuania, France, Israel
and Jordan, Mary Lou has taken many photographs of interest. Some of these
photographs have been developed into original prints with ImagOn, which she
uses to create a plate from the image in the photograph to be inked and put
through the press. In this way she is able to combine her interests in photography,
fine art printmaking and computer graphics.