 From 1973–74 she attended the Brooklyn Museum Art School where she studied figurative sculpture with Barney Hodes.She met Blaise Tobia at Brooklyn College and in 1974, both Maksymowicz and Tobia entered the MFA program at the University of California, San Diego, where each earned an MFA (1977).Maksymowicz worked with Allan Kaprow, Newton & Helen Harrison, Eleanor & David Antin, Ree Morton, Moira Roth, Harold Cohen and David Ross.