Karras, Maria, 1950-

Maria Karras was born in New York City in 1950 and received her BFA in printmaking from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1973. Inspired by a two-day workshop led by Judy Chicago that she attended before graduating, Karras decided to enroll at the Feminist Studio Workshop (FSW), which opened later that year in the fall of 1973. She arrived in Los Angeles that September, and became part of the inaugural cohort at the FSW, where she attended the first classes held at co-founder Sheila de Bretteville's home and helped to transform what had been the Chouinard Art Institute on South Grand View Street near MacArthur Park into the first home of the Woman's Building, which opened to the public in November of that year. From 1973 to 1980, Karras documented the daily life of the Woman's Building while also taking part in the Feminist Studio Workshop and the Women's Graphics Center. During this time, she also obtained her Master of Arts in art education from Goddard College and produced her own feminist photography and books addressing gender roles, especially in relation to race and ethnicity and her Greek-American heritage. In the late 1970s, she received a Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) grant, which she used to create a project for the city's bus system titled Both Here and There. This project was later included as part of the group exhibition Issue: Social Strategies by Women Artists, curated by Lucy Lippard for the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London.

Karras became certified as a registered biological photographer and worked in that capacity at the Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center and the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center from 1980 to 1988. In 1983, Karras opened Maria Karras Photography, a creative portrait studio in Pasadena, California where the artist continues to work.

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