Talk

Renowned artist Mary Frank joins the SVA Honors Program and BFA Visual and Critical Studies for the Art and Politics Lecture Series, to discuss “Art and Our Earth.”

Frank will reflect on the seamless connection between the planet and its inhabitants. Through the product of her hands she explores both the majesty and tragedy of human existence. Sustained by nature's incomparable beauty, her advocacy and activism is as much a part of her art as paint, canvas and clay.

Mary Frank was born in London in 1933 and moved to the United States at the age of seven, fleeing the bombings of London during World War II. In the early 1950s she began carving wood sculpture, and studied with Hans Hoffman and Max Beckmann. In 1969, she began working on large multi-part, figurative clay sculptures until the early 80s. Over the course of Frank’s career, she has worked in many mediums and materials, most notably with her monoprints, drawings, sculpture, painting and photography, and has been the subject of numerous solo museum and gallery exhibitions over the years. As described by art critic John Yau, Frank paints “elemental worlds largely inhabited by women (men, plants and animals) who are maenads, oracles, winged creatures and warriors –solitary and self-sustaining beings…(her) photographs of tableaus, which she assembles out of a variety of works she has made in different mediums, are all in pursuit of further defining the conditions of a mythic world.” Beyond the studio Mary is an ardent activist for social and environmental causes and a tireless advocate of Planned Parenthood and Solar Cookers International, an organization that provides women in areas of energy poverty with solar powered cookers.