Mary Broadbeck, originally trained in industrial design, worked in the West Michigan furniture industry for a dozen years—she is listed as inventor on several U.S. furniture-related patents—before shifting to image-making in the 1990s. She holds a BFA in industrial design from Michigan State University and an MFA in printmaking from Western Michigan University, and she studied Japanese woodblock printmaking in Tokyo with Yoshisuke Funasaka on a Japanese government Bunka-Cho Fellowship in 1998. Her landscape woodblock prints—most of which depict the Great Lakes—have received critical acclaim in both Japan and the United States; the Sleeping Bear Dunes series, created 2006–2008, is in the permanent collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts and in many private collections throughout the world. Brodbeck teaches the traditional methods of Japanese woodblock printing through public workshops, college and university courses, and private lessons, and she is currently making a documentary film about the process. A Michigan native, she lives in Kalamazoo.
