Virginia A. Myers

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Virginia A. Myers (born 1927) is an American artist, professor, and inventor. She was born in Greencastle, Indiana, and grew up with her parents and younger sister mostly in Cleveland, Ohio, where her father taught at various colleges and schools.

She studied at George Washington University and the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., and received her B.A. in drawing and painting in 1949. Then, in 1951 she went on to earn an M.F.A. in Painting from The California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland. Myers completed post-graduate work at the University of Illinois (Urbana) and in 1955 came to the University of Iowa to study printmaking with Mauricio Lasansky. From 1961-1962, Myers studied in Paris at Atelier 17 with Stanley William Hayter under a Fulbright Scholarship.

In 1962 Myers became a University of Iowa faculty member, where she teaches printmaking in the School of Art and Art History. Myers teaches intaglio printmaking and foil imaging, an offering unique among fine arts schools around the world that was made possible by her invention of the Iowa Foil Printer, which makes use of the commercial foil stamping process. In 1983 Myers began researching the use of gold leaf and foil in the printmaking process. She discovered that foil was not being used by artisans in the fine arts because the foiling process was strictly commercial. Her dissatisfaction with foiling options available to printmakers led her to invent the Iowa Foil Press, a device that allows individual artists to incorporate foil stamping into their work. After the invention of the press, she worked in conjunction with community members and students to improve and document the printmaking process of foil stamping using the Iowa Foil Press, collectively produced a book, "Foil Imaging...A New Art Form," in 2001.

As of 2007, Professor Virginia A. Myers continues to teach printmaking at the University of Iowa printmaking studios, where she and her students are developing and perfecting hot-stamped foil techniques to create both editionable and un-editionable original prints. Myers has presented in more than 100 one-person exhibitions in the United States and abroad, and has participated in more than 150 juried exhibitions and traveling shows nationally and internationally, Virginia A. Myers work is included in collections at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio; and the Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, among others.