Joanne Ungar is originally from Minneapolis. After several years of liberal arts studies at Oberlin College in Ohio, she moved to New York City, where she earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, focusing on collage. She began employing waxes as her main collage agent, after exploring and working with shellac, resins and acrylic mediums. Since the mid 1990’s, waxes and encaustic have been her main medium. Her wax “recipe” is a work-in-progress: she is often tinkering with it to get the desired lucidity and luminosity for whatever she happens to be burying or revealing in her layers of wax. She uses only highly refined materials with very high melting points, creating work that is archival and stable in all viewing environments.

Joanne was awarded a NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in 2017. She is represented by the Front Room Gallery in New York City. She lives on the Lower East side of Manhattan with her husband and their 2 cats, and maintains her long-time art studio in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.