Maura Dwyer is a northeast Baltimore native, and 2012 graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where she studied performance, painting, and film. With an art practice that began in painting and illustration, and continued with set design, theater, film, and mural apprentices after college, in 2015 she co-founded Spectrum Murals. This collectively-run mural studio embedded curriculum-guided murals into educational spaces that served students with special needs.

Eventually desiring a closer collaboration with students, Maura became an Arts for Learning roster Teaching Artist, facilitating mural residences across Maryland that focus on building critical design skills. Along with that, from 2017 - 2018, she led collaborative installations in Baltimore City’s annual arts festivals, Artscape and Light City, that highlighted neighborhood history and identity through visual storytelling.

When not making public art, she writes, produces and performs crankies, or scrolling panoramas, that combine research and personal narrative, and has performed at the annual Crankie Festival at The Creative Alliance in east Baltimore, Pittsburg, and Vermont. 

In 2019, she began working with the Neighborhood Design Center's Place Matters program, researching best practices for capacity building and preservation in lower-income neighborhoods. In 2020, she continued at the Neighborhood Design Center as a Community Engagement Coordinator for the National Endowment for the Arts-funded public lighting initiative, Signal Station North.

Following that, she began a position as the Program Coordinator for the Station North Arts District to revitalize the district’s art walks and offer more opportunities for artists, small businesses, and creative entrepreneurs.

In 2021, she was awarded a month-long residency at the Blue Mountain Center in upstate New York to develop a new visual storytelling performance (in the form of a cyanotype crankie) called “Wilder Than Walls.”  

In 2025, Maura recieved a master’s degree in Regional & City Planning with a focus on democratic economic development and creative placemaking, and embeds her planning skills into her social art practice. 

Photo above by Philip Muriel, courtesy of Arts for Learning. You can also find more of her work on the Baker Artist Portfolio site.