Amy Namowitz Worthen

Worthen was born in New York in 1946. She attended the High School of Music and Art, the Art Students' League and the Brooklyn Museum School before going to Smith College to study printmaking with Leonard Baskin. In 1968 she came to the University of Iowa to do graduate work in printmaking with Mauricio Lasansky and received her M.A. in 1969. In 1970 she moved to Des Moines where she has taught at Drake University and since 1971 at the Des Moines Art Center.

Worthen works primarily as an engraver, incising her designs with a burin on to the copper plates she prints. Her images frequently deal with architectural environments that serve as the location for fantasies and psychological situations. She has had forty two solo exhibitions in the US and abroad, and her work has been included in over a hundred international, national, and regional exhibitions. Her prints are in many public and museum collections in the US. She has also published numerous catalogues, essays, and articles on topics in the history of prints. Worthen is much involved with international cultural exchange programs, especially with Italy and Japan, and she serves on the board of Iowa Sister States, Iowa's international partner states program. She is married to Tom Worthen, and they have two daughters, Shana and Maria.