About

Dana Perlman worked for 3-decades as a midwife throughout the Philadelphia area, eventually directing the Midwifery Institute at Philadelphia University and then at Jefferson. In 2024, Dana returned to her art practice full-time. She holds a B.A. in Fine Art from Brandeis University. She has also studied at the New York Studio School for Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture and been an Associate Artist at the Clay Studio. She recently attended the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts to study ceramics.

Her work explores themes of womanhood through the lived experiences of autonomy, self-expression, reproduction, relationship, individuality, and resilience. Her work is informed by her decades of midwifery clinical, academic, and advocacy practice, survivorship, and the impact of gender throughout her life.

Her current project, Birth Ephemera, explores the complex landscapes of pregnancy, labor, and birth across lifetimes using personal and shared narrative, ceramic sculpture, sound, and found ephemera and memory objects.

In addition to the Birth Ephemera project, Dana makes a variety of functional and decorative ceramics.

Dana welcomes inquires for artistic collaboration.