Louis Marak was born in 1942 in Shawnee, Oklahoma. In 1965 he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Crafts from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in ceramics in 1967 from Alfred University in New York.
From 1967 to 1969 he was an Instructor of Art at Keuka College in Keuka Park, New York. In the fall of 1969, he was hired as an Assistant Professor of Art at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, where as a Professor of Art he taught ceramics for 37 years. During that time, he also served as the Art Department Chair from 1980 to 1983. In 2006 he retired from teaching and is currently a Professor Emeritus at Humboldt State University. His studio and home are located in Eureka, CA where he continues to live and work.
The Dorothy Weiss Gallery in San Francisco, CA represented Louis Marak from 1984 through 2000 when the gallery closed. During that time he had four one-man shows and was included in five group exhibitions at her gallery. Other galleries that have also shown his work include The Ferrin Gallery, The Sybaris Gallery, The Martha Schneider Gallery, Gallery Eight, and most recently at The John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis, CA.
His work has also been included in numerous group exhibits at museums in this country and abroad, including the American Crafts Museum in New York City, the Renwick Gallery of Fine Art in Washington, D.C., the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the National Museum in Jakarta, Indonesia, and the Suntory Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan.
His work is also in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as part of the Smits Collection, the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, WA, the Oakland Museum in Oakland, CA, the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young, The Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, UT, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY, Alfred Ceramic Museum at Alfred University in Alfred, NY, and the Morris Graves Museum of Art in Eureka, CA.
Louis Marak received a National Endowment for the Arts, Craftsmen’s Fellowship Grant in 1975 and a California Arts Council, Artist’s Fellowship Grant in 1994. In 1995 he was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome, and in 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the American Craft Council. He was also selected as a recipient of the 2019 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Excellence in Teaching Award.
Marak’s work has also been included in many books and publications on contemporary ceramics, and he has conducted ceramic workshops at universities and art centers throughout the country.