Biography

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Karen Delaney has been an artist for 30 years. She exhibits in galleries and group shows regionally, nationally, and internationally and has works in private collections and institutions. She has a permanently installed 13’ sculpture on the Danube River in Hungary and a 9' relief sculpture at Penn State, Great Valley. Karen has an MFA from Radford University in Virginia, where she was a Graduate Teaching Fellow. She has taught studio art and art history at the Indiana University of PA, The Anglo-American College in Prague, and Emmanuel College in Boston. She has a Certificate in Museum Studies from Harvard University and worked in the Carnegie Museum of Art education department in Pittsburgh. For three years, she was the executive director at the Chester County Art Association in West Chester, then, in 2016, shifted to Curator there until May 2019. 

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Karen learned to oxygen-acetylene weld at age 17 while attending the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts held at Bucknell University that summer. She gathered with 59 other high-school-aged visual artists selected from throughout PA.  There were also vocalists, musicians, dancers, and actors (Kevin Bacon attended not long before Karen did). Sadly, the Governor’s School no longer exists.

Artist Statement

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"My works reference architecture, botanical forms, and the human figure, but they are not necessarily representational of any particular one. In this way, the pieces offer something totally new. They are a product of my fascination with the tensions and harmonies created by manipulating form, space, and line. I have endless ideas and am whole-heartedly devoted to expressing all of them in steel and other complimentary materials."