Bio
Born 1955, Philadelphia. Lives and works in Baltimore.
Will Stokes Jr. was introduced to printmaking at Prints in Progress where he met Marion Boulton Stroud. When Stroud founded The Fabric Workshop and Museum in 1977, Stokes was the first High School Apprentice and he has continued to maintain a studio at FWM ever since. Encouraged by Stroud, Stokes studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and later at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, ME (1996). He has also participated in several artist residencies. In 1998, the Printmaking Workshop sponsored his print residency at the Mohammed Kahlil Studio, New York, NY. He also did a residency at Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (1993) and at The Printmaking Workshop, New York, NY (1988). Stokes had several one-person exhibitions in Philadelphia at the Esther M. Klein Art Gallery (1991), FWM (1986), the Janet Fleisher Gallery (1980), and at The Painted Bride Art Center (1979), as well as outside the city at the Haynes Art Center Glass Gallery, Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1990). His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions including Material World - From Lichtenstein to Viola: 25 Years of the FWM, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2002), Verso, guest curated by Nancy Spector, FWM (1997), and Pattern in Print: Artists Celebrate Cloth, United States Information Agency, touring exhibition (1991-93). His work is also in numerous private collections including that of Marion Boulton Stroud, Anne d'Harnoncourt, Eudora Moore, John and Ann Ollman, Charles and Noelle Fahlen, Janet Fleisher, Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz, Ted and Barbara Aronson, Ann Percy Stroud, Dr. and Mrs. William Wolgin. Stokes currently lives in Baltimore, but regularly commutes to The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia.