Mary Hark • Handmade papers, linen cloth, mixed media • Photographed by Jim Escalante and Mariah Orate Moneda
Ordinary TOPOGRAPHIES
On View: January 21 - March 7, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, February 6, 6-8pm. (NOTE: THIS EVENT WAS RESCHEDULED FROM FRIDAY, JANUARY 23.)
This event is free and open to all. Enjoy meeting the artist, music from DJ Spincycle, and refreshments.
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TAC is pleased to present, Ordinary TOPOGRAPHIES, a collection of recent works by artist, hand papermaker, and educator Mary Hark.
Ordinary TOPOGRAPHIES is a dynamic collection of paper textile works created from handmade flax and linen papers. The exhibition highlights texture, layering, and the physical evidence of process, encouraging slow and contemplative viewing. Shifts between dense, grounded tones and light, delicate traces create a subtle rhythm throughout the work. Together, the pieces reflect on time, labor, and attention, finding meaning in the quiet marks that accumulate within the spaces and moments of daily life.
“Harks constructed paintings combine handmade 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. Their layered 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. Harks' 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.”
-- Jody Clowes, Director, James Watrous Gallery, Madison, Wisconsin
About the Artist
Mary Hark is a Professor in Design Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she teaches papermaking and textiles. 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 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 earned 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.
Exhibitions at TAC are supported by the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation, Paula and David Kraemer, and by Dane Arts with additional funds from the Frautschi and Rowland Foundations, Diane Ballweg, and the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation.
If you are interested in information on supporting TAC’s nonprofit mission, and advancing creative expression through fiber art, please contact us.