Art Therapy (BA)

Insalaco Center for Studio Arts

The Michael and Dolores Insalaco Center for Studio Arts is home to the Art Department. The Insalaco Center also houses the Kresge, Mahady and Suraci Galleries and features drawing and painting studios showcasing naturally-lit rooms with beautiful views of the campus. There are studios and equipment for woodworking, jewelry-making, ceramics, sculpture, photography, printmaking, graphic design, illustration, and art therapy, and private and semi-private workspaces for upper-level BFA, MA, and MFA students. Private and semi-private work spaces are available to upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. Art students can access the building 24 hours a day.

Built and dedicated in 2001, the facility was made possible through the generous support of Michael Insalaco, Trustee Emeritus and former Board Chair, and his wife, Dolores.

Sandtray Room

Sandtray and Sandplay are forms of therapy that allow clients to create their own representations of their inner world or experiences using miniature figures and sand. These creations can become metaphors of the client’s life and serve as a means for the client to reflect on conflicts, obstacles, and self-acceptance. Sandtray & Sandplay therapy are beneficial for a range of ages and populations. As in art therapy, work within the sandtray can be carried out non-verbally and contains symbolism of the client’s inner world (Zhou, 2009). The sandtray room, located in the Insalaco Center for Studio Arts, Room 205 at Marywood University, enables students to directly experience and learn about the process of incorporating sand and miniatures into therapy.

Studio Arts Classrooms

The Insalaco Center for Studio Arts features drawing and painting studios showcasing naturally lit rooms with beautiful views of the campus. There are studios and equipment for woodworking, jewelry-making, ceramics, sculpture, photography, printmaking, multipurpose classrooms for graphic design and illustration, and private and semi-private studios for upper level BFA, MA, and MFA students.

The Clay Studio consists of a large common workroom with electric- and kick- wheels, extruders, slab roller, and worktables. Adjoining the workroom is a kiln and glazing room with four electric kilns and two gas kilns. Ceramics majors and minors also have access to personal workspaces that connect to the main workroom and kiln room.

Students in illustration, drawing, painting, and foundations have access to two adjacent studios, each about 800 square feet of uninterrupted space with 10 ft. ceilings. One studio has floor-to-ceiling windows extending 80 ft. along two walls. The other has floor-to-ceiling windows extending 40 ft. along one wall. Both studios are fully equipped with easels and taborets, as well as track lighting, student lockers, storage racks, and ventilation systems.

In addition, students have use of multipurpose classrooms equipped with negative, slide and flatbed scanners, large-format color inkjet printers, color plotters, and digital access to Adobe Creative Cloud software. 

The large and airy third floor art studio offers dedicated space for novice through advanced painting students. The room has movable partitions for configuring semiprivate work areas according to class size. Six private art studios 12x15 overlook a stand of mature trees and provide plenty of natural light for each student pursuing a undergraduate degrees in studio art painting.

Graphic design, printmaking, and photography students have access to a group black and white darkrooms, a private darkroom for making large projection prints, and an alternative processes room devoted to working with historic printmaking methods such as palladium, cyanotype and gum bichromate. The department has seven 4x5 view cameras which are available for student use, along with a variety of 35mm and 2-1⁄4 cameras. The spacious lighting studio is equipped with versatile strobe systems, backdrops, and a prop zone. Resources include an adjacent multipurpose classroom equipped with negative, slide, and flatbed scanners, large-format color inkjet printers, color plotters and digital access to Adobe Creative Cloud software.

The second floor printmaking studio provides facilities for working in all the major processes. Currently there are there intaglio/relief presses, a litho press with stones and grinding sink, a letterpress proof press and assorted type, camera room, screen stretching unit and assorted frames, screen washout unit, NU ARC exposure units, and various paper filing and materials cabinets. Adjoining the main studio is a separate letterpress studio and a fully equipped papermaking facility including a Hollander paper beater.

The first floor 3D/sculpture area consists of mold-making facilities for casting metal, resins, plaster, and glass. Fabrication equipment allows students to cut, forge, weld, and cold-finish metal. The hot shop is outfitted with kilns for glass cutting. slumping, and fusing in addition to the foundry for bronze and aluminum. The jewelry studio bays provide opportunities for students to work with "light" metals.  The wood studio, shared with Architecture, is designed and equipped for all aspects of woodwork as applied to furniture making and sculpture, including carving, lamination, turning, and finishing.

Mahady Art Gallery

The Robert J. and Elizabeth FitzMartin Mahady Gallery, known more frequently as the Mahady Gallery, is located on the first floor of the Insalaco Center for Studio Arts, providing an open and elegant setting for the display of contemporary artwork. Throughout the year, the gallery offers a variety of group and solo shows by visiting artists, juried regional competitions, faculty exhibits, student shows, and curated national exhibitions. Every art major has an exhibit in the Mahady Gallery before graduation.

Formerly known as the Contemporary Gallery, the venue underwent renovations in 2001. Elizabeth Mahady, a generous benefactor, underwrote the remodeling of the space, which was renamed to honor her and her late husband. In 2025, the gallery was relocated to the lobby of the Insalaco Center for Studio Arts. The refurbished Mahady Gallery has continued to showcase works of talented students, faculty, and visiting artists, providing a source of artistic enrichment for all the people of the region.

Maslow Study Gallery

The Maslow Study Gallery is a learning laboratory, providing fieldwork experiences, internships, and opportunities in curatorial and exhibition studies to Marywood students. Works in The Maslow Collection are available for professional research and study, and many are loaned to regional and national exhibitions.

The Maslow Collection is the largest and most comprehensive collection of Contemporary art in Northeastern Pennsylvania, with over 700 works by more than 150 artists. Collected by Marilyn and Richard Maslow and originally housed at InterMetro Industries, it is now on long-term loan to Marywood University.

The largest part of the Collection is devoted to paintings by newly established or emerging artists working or exhibiting in New York during the late 1970s through the early 1990s, such as David Reed, Terry Winters, Nicholas Africano, Robert Cumming, James Biederman, Jack Goldstein, Melissa Meyer, Gary Lang, Anthony Sorce, Edward Henderson, and Katherine Porter, among many others.

The Collection also includes major prints and works on paper by Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, Robert Longo, Chuck Close, Sherrie Levine, Edward Ruscha, Jane Hammond, Peter Halley, Sol LeWitt, and Andy Warhol, among others; and important photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Barbara Kasten, Lee Friedlander, Sandy Skoglund, and Mark Cohen. 

The Maslow Collection has loaned works to major exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC; The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, NY; and the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA; among others.

The Collection is, at its core, a learning laboratory that provides exhibitions, dialogue, fieldwork experience, internships, and other opportunities in curatorial studies. Access begins with all Marywood Art Department students, who interact directly with the Collection as an enhancement of their course content (exhibitions are frequently co-curated by faculty members), and extends to Arts Administration students in a more in-depth way, as well as the larger community as a major resource through loans and events.

Suraci Art Gallery

The Suraci Gallery, located on the first floor of the Insalaco Center for Shields Arts, houses a rotating selection of Marywood's permanent collection of fine and decorative art. Exhibitions in the Suraci Gallery also showcase regional and national artists; support art faculty work and scholarship; provide degree research and documentation opportunities for current and alumni art students; and foster community outreach projects and interests.

The gallery consists of three collections. The gallery's Asian Collection consists of ceramics, furniture, netsukes, inro, ivories, and prints. Bronze and marble sculpture, paintings, ceramics, glass, and French ivories comprise the 19th Century Collection. Religious icons, furniture, and 20th century works round out the Suraci Collection.

Kresge Gallery

Located in the lobby of the Insalaco Center for Studio Arts, the Kresge Gallery is a versatile exhibition, critique, and lecture space. An alternative venue to the formal art galleries, the Kresge Gallery provides a working and experimental exhibition site for art students and faculty to showcase a variety of work throughout each semester.