Mary Hark

I am interested in the way small things accumulate.

I find beauty in the accidental marks left in the materials we handle daily.

I build these pieces by continually fixing the mistakes: cutting out, mending, covering up and adding a new bit until it feels complete and beautiful. With this accumulation of attention and labor, sometimes the worst mistake yields the most beautiful surface.
My work is constructed of handmade flax and linen paper of varying surface qualities. I stitch pieces together, rather like constructing a quilt, then each piece is drawn into, dyed, painted, cut, re-stitched and worked in a variety of ways.
The use of stitch is important, both as a structural element, and as a drawing mark with specific references. The use of handmade paper allows a wonderfully rich range of surfaces to be explored, from soft and cloth-like, to hard, crisp and inflexible. I am especially interested in the tenuous imprints our experience leaves on materials with which we live, and I love to find and make beautiful, evocative surfaces.

Mary Hark - 2009

Mary Hark

Artist Information

Mary Hark’s recent paintings combine handmade flax and kozo papers and cloth into an intricate ground, stitched together with thread and built up into a complex stratigraphy with paint, wax, textile dyes, inks, and pencil marks. Large in scale, they appear both delicate and resilient. Theirlayered surfaces invoke the patina of time: the slow, subtle erosion of a well-thumbed page, the careless beauty of mended clothing, the evocative fissures in an old painted wall. Hark’s dedicated study of both paper and textile techniques lends her surfaces a particular depth. She crosses traditional boundaries with knowledge and respect, creating a rich and surprising body of
mixed-media work.

Mary Hark is an Assistant Professor in Design Studies at the University of Wisconsin––Madison. She is an independent curator of textile and paper art exhibitions and is proprietor of HARK! Handmade Paper Studio which specializes in small editions of high quality flax and linen papers.

Hark's fiber/mixed media paintings have been exhibited internationally. She has been invited to lecture and teach at university art departments nationally including Penland School of Craft, Haystack School of Craft, Women’’s Studio Workshop, and Arrowmont School of Arts and
Crafts.
Awarded a Fulbright Senior Research Grant in 2006 to work and study in Ghana, West Africa,
Mary continues to have strong ties to the art community in Kumasi, Ghana.