Mary Hark will discuss her practice as a studio artist, a production papermaker, and the ways she has shared her skills with a variety of communities. Describing projects that she has led in inner city St. Paul, Minnesota, her ongoing project in Ghana, West Africa, as well as her work as an educator in a variety of settings, Mary will share the ways that her papermaking practice has contributed to building community in the places she lives and works. 

About the Artist: Mary Hark is a Professor in Design Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she teaches papermaking and textile design. She is the proprietor of HARK! Handmade Paper producing limited editions of handmade papers in collaboration with book designers and artists, as well as unique paper artworks that have been exhibited internationally. Her work can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian Museum of African Art, the Ginsberg Book Arts Collection in Johannesburg, South Africa, and in many university special collections in the United States. Hark is the recipient of a 2021-22 McKnight Fellowship in Book Arts for her work as a hand papermaker. In 2006 Hark received a Senior Fulbright Research Grant to Sub Saharan Africa, and continues to lead an initiative in Kumasi, Ghana, building the first hand papermill in West Africa capable of producing high-quality papers entirely from local botanicals. Hark received an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an M.A. from the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

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Please email anna.doll@rbi.gatech.edu for questions or more information.