Coming from a creative family, Christine Dolinich-Matuska, DFA, became involved in her profession because her father was an engineer and taught her to draw in perspective even when she was a little girl prior to starting kindergarten. Her father played music with a band on the side, and her mother studied piano as an adult; they were very much behind their experience in the arts and music. Music and the arts for her go hand-in-hand. Dr. Dolinich-Matuska currently works as a teaching artist, pianist and visual artist, specifically in mixed media.
Dr. Dolinich-Matuska began her professional career as the director of the Linden Art and Music Studio in New Jersey in 1983, remaining in this position for four years while serving as a critic for the Union County Teen Arts Festival at Union County College in Cranford, New Jersey, from 1986 to 1994. She then served as a visual arts curator for Merck and Co., Inc., in Rahway, New Jersey, in 1989, a professional review panelist for the Union County Arts Grants Committee from 1990 to 2005 and chair of the Piano Teachers Society of America (PTSA) Music, Art and Poetry Competition from 1998 to 2018. During this time, she was also a faculty member at Prince George’s Community College (PGCC) in Largo, Maryland, in 2000, Felician University in New Jersey from 2001 to 2005, and the Union Institute and University in Cincinnati from 2006 to 2007. Additionally, Dr. Dolinich-Matuska directed the Union County Conservatory in Rahway from 1982 through 2005 when she relocated to southern New Jersey.
Prior to the start of her professional career, Dr. Dolinich-Matuska pursued a formal education at Douglass Residential College of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, earning a Bachelor of Arts. She then continued her education at St. George University International, where she received a Master of Fine Arts in painting in 2001 and a Doctor of Fine Arts in interdisciplinary arts and interactive sculpture, summa cum laude, in 2002. Additionally, Dr. Dolinich-Matuska obtained a PTSA national certification in piano pedagogy in 1994.
As an artist, Dr. Dolinich-Matuska has exhibited in myriad group shows nationwide at venues such as the Los Angeles Women’s Center, the University of Houston and the University of Utah in 1977, the Newark Museum in 1982, the City Without Walls Gallery in Newark, New Jersey, from 1982 to 1986, the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey, in 1987, Merck & Co. from 1989 to 1993, the Front Room Gallery in Singapore in 2004 and various exhibitions with the National Association of Women Artists. Likewise, she has exhibited her work in solo exhibitions at the Middlesex County College Art Gallery in Edison, New Jersey, in 1985, the Douglass College Women Artists Series from 1986 to 1987, Rutgers in 1987, Brookdale Community College in 1988 and Caldwell University in 1976, 1982 and 1989. Dr. Dolinich-Matuska was also one of four artists selected in a national competition to design and create Millennium Arts Time Capsules for the Montpelier Cultural Arts Center in Maryland, which were exhibited in 2000 and subsequently sealed and stored in a vault to be opened in the year 3000.
Thematically, Dr. Dolinich-Matuska’s works have consistently alluded to global unity, healing and preservation. An environmentally conscious artist, she incorporates recycled and found materials into her artwork. In honor of her achievements, Dr. Dolinich-Matuska received a grant from Robert Rauschenberg through Change, Inc., and was inducted into the National Association of Women Artists in 2000 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. More recently, she was the recipient of the PTSA Teacher of the Year Award at Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall in New York in 2018. Furthermore, she previously accepted the Allison R. and Maria E. Drake Pedagogy Award for Excellence in Ensemble Teaching, 29 PTSA Genia Robiner Piano Pedagogy Awards, three H.E.A.R.T. Grant Awards from the Union County Board of Chosen Freeholders and first prize for best mixed media work in the Art with Museum Subjects Cover Contest in 1992. A fellow of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts from 1984 to 1985, Dr. Dolinich-Matuska would like to be remembered by people who have seen what she has created, including her students and others she has touched.