Edwin Scheier

Edwin Scheier was born in The Bronx, New York, to a Jewish German immigrant father, and an American mother.

Although never formally trained, Scheier attended free seminars at Cooper Union, and also worked for a silversmith and a ceramicist.

This led to other positions in the WPA, and it was through one of these roles, as a field supervisor of craft programs, that he again met Mary, who was directing a ceramics studio at the Big Stone Gap Federal Art Gallery in Abingdon, Virginia.

They were married on August 19, 1937, eventually resigned their posts with the WPA, and after a period as itinerant puppeteers, established a long-term partnership as fine ceramicists.

After years in Oaxaca, the Scheiers returned to the United States, settling in Green Valley, Arizona, where Edwin and Mary resided until their deaths.

[citation needed] Edwin Scheier's work often employed symbols for life, birth, and rebirth.

[2][9] In 1988, Edward Lebow described Scheier's figure work as showing “the humorous lyrical primitivism of the personal subconscious.”[7]