African Studies Program faculty member Mary Hark has been awarded the 2015 Emily Mead Baldwin Award in the Creative Arts by the Arts Institute, specifically recognizing her work in Ghana with Ghanaian fellow artists.
According to the UW-Madison Art Institute, the Emily Mead Baldwin Award in the Creative Arts recognizes and honors extraordinary artistic projects and endeavors of the highest quality carried out by tenured members of the UW-Madison arts faculty in the areas of Art, Communication Arts, Creative Writing, Dance, Environment, Textile and Design, Music Composition and Performance, and Theater and Drama.
This award provides $20,000 of general research support to a faculty member in the creative arts.
Hark is an Associate Professor of Design Studies in the School of Human Ecology. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was awarded a Fulbright Senior Research Grant in 2006 to work and study in Ghana, where she continues to have strong ties. She developed a papermaking workshop in Kumasi which exclusively uses local materials, and she is one of the founders of Take Time Press, a limited-edition, fine-press publisher which nurtures international artist collaborations and celebrates the cultural richness of the Greater Ashanti Region of Ghana. Hark’s fiber/mixed media paintings have been exhibited internationally. She has lectured and taught at art departments nationally including Penland School of Craft, Haystack School of Craft, Women’s Studio Workshop, and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. Also an independent curator of textile and paper art exhibitions, she is proprietor of HARK! Handmade Paper Studio which specializes in small editions of high quality flax and linen papers.