Maya Lea Portner is an artist and educator in Honolulu, Hawaii. She earned a BFA (Sculpture) from Washington University School of Art in St. Louis and an MFA in Art (Fibers) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Maya has exhibited nationally in New York City, San Francisco, and St. Louis, MO. As part of her graduate research, Maya spent time at the Museum of Natural History ‘La Specola’ in Florence, Italy, where her work has since been exhibited. Her sculptures were included in the Holland Paper Biennial of 2008 in Den Haag, The Netherlands. Maya has been artist-in-residence internationally: at “Waaw” Residency in Senegal in 2015 and at CHHAAP Baroda Printmaking Studio in Gujurat, India, in 2011. Most recently she participated in the Open Studio Residency 2018 at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine. Portner is the 13th recipient of the prestigious “Catherine E. B. Cox Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts, awarded biannually by the Honolulu Museum of Art.