Hagen/Hark: New Walls
From Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program
Artists: Chad Alice Hagen and Mary Hark
May 6 - July 10, 1994
Minnesota Artists Gallery
Organized by artist and guest curator Chris Allen-Wickler, this exhibition featured textile artists Chad Alice Hagen and Mary Hark, whose large-scale fiber works push the conventional boundaries of commercial and domestic function. Chad Alice Hagen achieves pure colors and dynamic surface patterns in her hand-felted works by using shibori and other resist-dye methods; shibori involves binding cloth before it is submerged in dye. Hagen's hand-sewn wall-sized felt constructions absorb sound, light, and color and are, she states, “capable of absorbing thought.” Mary Hark's mixed-media works integrate handmade flax and Eastern papers, linen, cloth, indigo dye, thread, and wax. The subtle surfaces of her work are marked to suggest traces of human experience. Fabrics are inherently vulnerable and impermanent, and Hark uses these limitations expressively, particularly in her references to the human body and the suggestion of fragile skins.
