Interview with Mary Hark

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM Interview #1767 HARK, MARY HARK, MARY (1956-) Book Artist At UW: 2007-Present Interviewed: 2018 Interviewer: Sarah Lange Transcribed by: Teresa Bergen Length: 1 hour, 40 minutes First Interview Session (August 27, 2018): Digital File 00:00:00 SL: Today is August 27, 2018. I'm Sarah Lange with the oral history program at UW Madison. I'm talking with Mary Hark, paper artist, proprietor of HARK! Handmade Paper Studio, and associate professor of textiles and fashion design at UW, Madison. We're at University Archives in Steenbock Library. So Mary, I wondered if you could start out by telling us a little bit about where you grew up. MH: Well, I'm a good Midwestern girl. My father was in graduate school at Notre Dame when I was born. And I have lived in, my early years in Indiana and then Minnesota and then Iowa City and then Chicago, and then Minnesota, and now Madison. So you can see it's a big Midwestern triangle. And I think I'm surely a product of that upbringing and education of there's a certain kind of work ethic which I think is just the way I'm wired. Whether or not this is related to being a Midwesterner, maybe not. But I've always had a love of primary engagement. So I like the mess. I like to cook. And I started out in clay. And I like process, and I like gardening and I like getting my hands dirty. I suspect that some of that is informed by growing up in the Midwest and being close to rural areas and around people that work with their hands. SL: Did you, you said that when you were born your father was working at Notre Dame. Were you in cities most of the time? Or were you kind of going back and forth? MH: Well, my father was in graduate school. And then he took an academic job in Minnesota. And we lived in proximity to universities or colleges. So, growing up education was just a given. It was part of the fabric of our family life somehow. But when you are living in a mid-sized town in Minnesota or a place like Iowa City, you're close to rural areas. You're driving through farmland. You know people who work on the farms. It's not exotic the way it might be if you grew up in New York City. SL: Sure. 00:01:00 And did your mom work outside the home? Or was she at home working? MH: My mom was primarily at home. And my mom's a really creative person. And she, in another life, I'm sure, would have been an artist. But she had a large family, which was her choice, and ran a pretty creative household with a lot of projects going on all the time, for better or worse. Sometimes kind of chaotic. I'm from a big family. I have five siblings. And my mom managed that environment with creativity. SL: What kind of projects did you work on at home? MH: Well, we made stuff. Like, we always made stuff. And we sewed things. We sewed our clothes, we sewed our coats. We cooked. There was a garden. We made all the ornaments for the Christmas tree. We made the Christmas cards. And it didn't seem, it just was what we did. And it wasn't professional. It was a kind of commitment. It was living on a small income, and a kind of commitment to being fully engaged. SL: Now would you say, then, that maybe some of these projects then at home kind of led you to pursue art maybe in school? MH: Yeah, I'm sure. I'm 00:02:00 sure that both the environment that my mom created and the example that my father provided. He was more of an intellectual, and he was a reader. And I have strong memories of him reading and being disconnected from the chaos of the household, but in his head. And I'm, of course, a product of those two people. And surely the values, many of the values that guide my decisions, either overtly or covertly, come from that first environment growing up in that household. SL: Were you also a reader growing up? MH: Always. SL: What did you like to read? MH: I read stories. I read, when I became an older student, like a high school student, I was very interested in social justice issues. I read beyond what I understood, but I liked the intellectual engagement of discourse around how things might be. My parents met at a Catholic worker house in Chicago. And they were Catholics, but they were part of a left-leaning social justice minority subculture in the Catholic Church. So we were also really involved in protesting the Vietnam War and engaged 00:03:00 in social justice issues as they showed up in the small towns where we lived. And I think that that engagement was also important to my becoming a teacher. Or my interest in sharing or building community around the things that I'm intellectually engaged in. SL: When did you know that you wanted to become a teacher? MH: I don't know. It was never led by that. I was never a very pragmatic person. I think I was good at certain things. And so I gravitated toward those things, and I responded to what was given to me. And I had a certain facility, so things would build, right? So I was given opportunities by my parents to, one thing they signed me up for college art classes when I was a young high school student. And that was a-I didn't think of it as unusual. But looking back on it, it wasn't what people did at that time. And I loved it. I didn't think of myself as special. I just thought, I love this mess I'm making. And I responded to the experience. And one thing led to the next. So interview as good at design. I could put things together. I gravitated toward those kinds of experiences in college. I was an art major. I studied clay. I did ceramics. I think my interest has always been in process. I really like the mess, the water, the being engaged in things that are really fundamental, and 00:04:00 having the intellectual part follow that physical engagement. And everything, all those kinds of decisions happened in a really organic way. I wasn't one of those kids, or am I an adult, that makes a plan and follows it very well. SL: Mm hmm. Can you talk a little bit more about the process of making art and experimenting, and maybe why you're so drawn to that aspect of it? MH: Um, I don't know. I don't know if I can do that just straight up. SL: Sure. MH: I like process. I like to cook. I like making bread. I like putting things together. I like the transformation of materials. Like if you have all the parts that are going to make a loaf of bread all over the counter, and then two hours later, you have this beautiful loaf of bread, or four hours later, it's satisfying. And I think I liked that about clay. But I also liked to draw and make marks on paper. But that for me was a bit more of an intellectual engagement. But some of the most important art classes I've taken, I think, were drawing classes in which I 00:05:00 was engaged physically with the mark making, and with my body and the pencil or the chalk and the page. But I was looking at something and responding to it in an intuitive way, which involved intellectually sorting out what I saw, but also in a, not spiritual isn't the right word, but in a more intuitive way of feeling it. Feeling sort of the poetry of that form, or feeling the poetry between the mark that was landing on the page and the thing I was looking at, and having that come through my arm. And I've had some really great teachers that in very organic ways help me to learn how to do that, or value that, and not just think about product. But think about what's happening in that process of mitigating the physical world that you're taking in and transforming it into something that is a response to that experience, or that visual experience, yeah. SL: Yeah. Thank you. I was wondering if maybe we could kind of go back a little bit. And do you remember in, say, elementary school, when you first started taking art classes, I imagine that might be when you were taking art classes, do you remember 00:06:00 first being taught to draw there? MH: No. I can remember loving certain kinds of crayons that were really squishy and soft. And I can remember without hesitation taking that on and being taken to task by nuns who thought I was just a little too big for my britches. But I wasn't. I wasn't. I just really liked it. Like, I liked it. And I didn't really have-I'm 62 years old. So when I was in grade school and I went to Catholic schools, there wasn't really art. I mean, there were certainly not art classes. But I knew how to organize a page. And from the early, from being very, very young, I would have been asked to make the poster for collecting milk money. Or I could get out of my math problems by taking the formulas and turning them into a poster, or being the one that was asked to, I don't know, make a card or whatever. And it was just, for me, just ordinary. I didn't especially feel special. I felt also kind of lucky to get out of some of the other work that I wasn't very good at. SL: When you said that they took you to task for being too big for your britches, what do you mean in 00:07:00 that? MH: I mean I can remember standing at a mural we were all working on with squishy, soft crayons, making something. And the nuns saying, just telling me to back up a little, like I was too-I mean, it was a very unself-conscious engagement for me. And for her, perhaps, I wasn't being-maybe I was taking up too much room, I have no idea. But I can remember feeling, it wasn't necessarily rewarded. It wasn't being a good girl to make a mess. SL: Okay. (laughs) And did you go to a grade school where you were being taught by nuns like through eighth grade? Or how long did you have nuns for teachers? MH: I went to elementary school, then public school for junior high and high school. SL: Okay. So what was that like? MH: You know, I had some 00:08:00 art teachers and I really liked it. And I wouldn't say the work was especially inspired. But I wasn't-now people are so self-conscious about raising little experts and little geniuses. But I was good at it, and I liked it, and I was never told by my parents not to do it. And everybody knew I liked it and was good at it. But I never felt that I was a special little art genius in any way. You know, it was pretty ordinary programming. It wasn't anything special. I think taking the classes at the university, that was a really insightful thing that my folks did for me. But again, it was, it was like a platform in which I could make stuff. And it was fun. SL: Where did you take college courses when you were in- MH: At the College of Saint Benedict. My father was at Saint John's. SL: And you ended up getting your degree in ceramics there as well. MH: Right. So I did my undergraduate in studio art. And I made a lot of bowls. I did some drawings. Again, I think it wasn't inspired artwork. But I loved what I was doing. People liked the bowls I made. It was kind of mindless, in a way. I just gravitated toward this. And also being around the other art students, and in the art department, just felt like that's the place where I should be. That felt right. And then when I finished school, I took some classes at the University of Minnesota as a special student. And that's where I 00:09:00 ran into some of these really, some of these drawing classes that were really important to me, that were taught by a woman named Mary Abbott, who's an abstract expressionist from New York. And she really created situations which weren't about making products, but were about mark making and looking. She sort of opened up a way of being in the arts that I hadn't been exposed to before, that wasn't about pleasing somebody or a product or a grade, but about feeling something. Letting go of things so that you can really take stuff in. And making marks through an engagement which was separate from the ordinary world. SL: So it sounds to me like, and correct me if I'm wrong, that maybe you were learning from her how to see things in a new way, and- MH: Well I think I was learning how to use all the parts of myself in tandem. My 00:10:00 hand and my intellect and my heart in some way. And that I was learning to think about the sort of poetic parts of art making that weren't about product. And that, for me, was in many ways life-changing. SL: Did you connect with other students there at the University of Minnesota when you were taking those classes? MH: Well, none that I'm in contact with now. It was, for some reason, I had a Pell, I had extra money. I don't know how that worked. I had Pell grant money and I was able to take these classes for free. I'm not sure how that worked. SL: So this was immediately after you graduated with your bachelor's degree? MH: Mm hmm. SL: And what made you decide to go to- MH: Well, the first year, I traveled. And then the second year, I moved to the Twin Cities. And I was a bit at loose ends. And then I discovered I had this chance to take some classes. And so I did. SL: Okay. Where did you travel to? MH: To Central America. Yeah. SL: Okay. Which countries? MH: I went with four friends. And we were gone for the winter. Our goal was to drive to Panama. But it was the year that the Nicaraguan border closed. So you 00:11:00 can remember, that was long ago. But we had friends in the Peace Corps in Honduras who were going to have a baby. So we went to see them. That was another primary, we traveled around. We looked at, we just, we went through all different parts of Mexico where there was craft activity and arts. And we went to Belize and Honduras and Costa Rica and El Salvador. But we didn't go through Nicaragua because it was too dangerous. So we didn't go down to Panama. It was an adventure. It wasn't an art-- SL: Sure. And when was this, about? MH: Well, '78, '79. SL: And how did you decide to go to Central America? Was one person kind of the one who really pushed for it? Or do you remember? MH: I don't know. We had, I think some of us had gone on a trip, like a January interim to some of the archeological sites. And we, it was accessible, it was affordable, it was warm. It wasn't deeply considered. SL: Sure, sure. 00:12:00 Well, you said that you took classes at the University of Minnesota. What made you first go to the Twin Cities after you came back from your trip? MH: You know, again, I just didn't have a plan. And I didn't want to stay in the small town that I had grown up in. And I didn't have a reason, or very much money, to go far, far away. And I think just the way people go to the closest big city. Somehow I knew it a little bit so it wasn't too challenging. But it was away and different and largish. SL: So then it sounds like you had a really good teacher there at the University of Minnesota. MH: Yeah, I had some really good teachers. SL: So when you were deciding, I don't know how you decided to get your master's degree. Maybe you could tell us that. How did you decide? MH: Well, I was involved with someone who was in the MFA program in painting in Iowa. And I joined him and entered the MFA program in drawing. And then we had our first child. And I found it really difficult to be, I loved having this child, this was a great thing for me. And I had a hard time being fully present in school and fully present in my domestic life, so I took a break. SL: Sure. MH: And then I, three years later, I had my second child and felt ready to try to get back into it. And I also, 00:13:00 my husband was a painter, is a painter. We're not married anymore. But it was clear from what was happening to him that it probably wasn't too smart for both of us to be in painting, which the drawing program was an extension of the painting program. So I had been, I just was walking by all the time, seeing this textile studio that you could look down in. And it just looked so great, so fascinating. And I had this idea, well, I could make practical things, and I could sell them. And I could be a designer of textile objects for domestic life, or whatever. And they accepted me into the graduate program based on my drawing portfolio. But I had to take the whole first year to learn everything, because I had never done any of that before. And I had this really fabulous teacher named Naomi Schedl. She was an older woman from South Africa who had left South Africa because she didn't want to stay in Apartheid. She was a white woman, but her family was engaged politically. And she was brilliant and also nurturing. And she had the highest of standards for all of us, but also a great sympathy for women who were juggling many different things. So she was like a gift from the universe. Because she just was available to my particular situation. And she expected a lot, and she both in terms of our 00:14:00 intellectual engagement with theory and ideas and concepts, and also with the practical applied work of making things. But she was sympathetic to the complications of having a young family. And that was exactly what I needed. Because I embraced my domestic life with my kids immensely, and I was really hungry to be like in the world making stuff. And she was a perfect guide. And the second year, so I was learning to weave and to print on fabric, and to do a lot of the sort of mixed media stuff that was in the air. That was in the early '80s, or the mid '80s, when textiles and fiber art was really coming into its own as a kind of language in contemporary art. And it was exciting. There was a lot in the air, and she was bringing it to our attention, and it was challenging and interesting. And again, like clay, it was a mess. We were dying things, and there was stuff. You had all this process time, and all these materials. And that appealed to me. I mean, I didn't at the time think that, or perhaps be able to say that. But in retrospect, it's so clear. And the second year I was there, somebody came to start the book arts program. His name was Tim Barrett. I had no idea what book arts was. I had no idea what papermaking was. I had no idea. And he needed a studio assistant. And just by, I think, I 00:15:00 don't know how it happened, but I became his assistant. So that was his very first year there. And he chose two assistants, one man and one woman. And that again was like this great gift. Because Tim Barrett has turned out to be one of the most important educators in book arts in recent times. He's a real generous, informed educator. And he was setting up his program and I was his shadow. So I learned so much. Then I was in his first papermaking classes. And apropos your question of who did you hang around with when you were at the University of Minnesota, those people that were in those classes were people that are my colleagues still. And I had really, again, kind of like Mary Abbott opened this world to me of what it means to really make art, Tim Barrett opened up other parts of the book for me. He talked about craft, that was a time when "craft" was a dirty word. Like he stood and said, "I am a craftsman." He would assign us to make 50 sheets of paper and he would look at every single 00:16:00 one and tell us where they were poorly made. The craft of it was really important. He was also an extremely generous and also demanding teaching. And I had never had anybody that would like call you at home and say, "You didn't clean that well enough. You've got to come back right now." Or, just like he was so engaged with each of us. And partly he was a new teacher. And he was learning how to be a teacher. And he just gave it 150 percent, 200 percent, all the time. And you know, none of us had ever experienced anything like that. So and I learned about the craft. I was with a bunch of really interesting people who were interested in craft. And a couple of them, Jana Pullman, who's now an important conservator and historian in book arts, she came through the program here. And they had this reciprocal program where people from Madison could study for one year at any of these other schools if something was offered that wasn't offered here. That program, now I've sent a couple students on that program. But she had been with Walter Hamady and went one year to study paper with Tim Barrett. And she's still a really important colleague and dear friend. And Aimee McKellar, Jocelyn Chateauvert, Bridget O'Malley, one of the proprietors of Cave Paper, all of us were in that mix. Ann Marie Kennedy. There's a whole bunch of us that were there that are still at it. All in 00:17:00 different ways. So I got to be the helper for Tim as he set this stuff up. And I got to be exposed to these high expectations along the lines of craft. And that was in the art department, which was on one side of the Iowa River. And then you could cross the river and walk up the hill to where the fiber program was, which was in home economics. Not unlike the textile program here, which is in human ecology, which is the old home economics. But there I was in fiber art with Naomi Schedl, who was very theoretical, very informed about contemporary art, very informed about feminism, about feminism in art. All the issues that you might ordinarily find in an art department, but which Tim Barrett wasn't informed about so much at that time. And Naomi wasn't so interested in craft, although she demanded a level of engagement with materials that was professional. She was interested in ideas. So I could take every messed up piece of paper that somebody discarded because Tim had held it up to the light and said, "That will never do." And I could grab that and bring it up to textiles where I could collage with it and dye with it. And so I was treating the paper like a textile, but I was also extending what I was doing with the textile, and bringing a more painterly attitude towards it. And all of that was just so particular to that pot of soup that was right there at that minute. And I was really lucky. And it suited me. And I just grew by leaps and bounds. And I think that education really gave me a foundation that helped direct the rest of my professional life as an artist and an educator. It was a really lucky break. I hadn't planned on any of it. I finished that MA degree and they, the art department invited me to stay. They didn't have an MFA in textiles. The printmaking department invited me to stay and do the MFA in printmaking. But Naomi had said, and I was really, like also I had a two year-old that was nursing, a five year-old that was a 00:18:00 five year-old. A husband that was having some trouble in life. I was teaching at their school to pay the tuition. I was a fulltime student. Like it was a messy life that was, this whole thing was taking place in. And Naomi said, I thought, well, I'm not going to finish the MFA. I'm going to get a teaching certificate. Because let's get real here. I've got a little family, and I've got to pay the bills. So I thought I would either get a teaching certificate or I would get a PhD in, I had also been doing work in social work as a way of paying the bills. And get a PhD somehow in social work to become more of like a policy maker, rather than a low-end case manager. And Naomi said, well, that's fine, but here's what you're going to do. We're going to apply to the Chicago Institute of Art, Cranbrook Academy, California College of Art and Design, UCAD, and Bloomington, Indiana will be your fallback. And I just did what she said. I just applied. Those were the best, most powerful programs in fibers in the country. And I was accepted everywhere, and I got full scholarship to two places. And I like-(laughs) you know, I didn't know, I was like, huh. (laughter) Huh. And in the middle of all the chaos that was swirling around me, I decided, luckily, to choose one 00:19:00 of them. I went to visit in Cranbrook, which was just incredibly beautiful. And I went to visit in Chicago, which was just overwhelming. But in Detroit, Cranbrook, do you know about Cranbrook? It's a very beautiful school. The grounds are like an artist retreat. It's exquisitely beautiful. And there's one artist who heads each media section. And then there's a very small group of students. And I wasn't sure what, and at that time it looked likely that I would be coming with my kids and without my husband. I didn't know how I would be there. Could you introduce me to somebody that had a child? Oh, no, they couldn't think of anyone that had a child. They could think of people that left their kids behind. In Korea. In New York. In San Francisco. They could think of an instructor who had a child. One. I just thought I can't put them in public school in Detroit, at that time. And this is Bloomfield Hills, so the private school was, you know, at that time fifteen thousand dollars a year. And I had a really hard time saying no, because it just seemed so beautiful and calm. (laughs) And Chicago was like chaotic. It was busy, it was, you know, bustling. I had lived in Iowa for the last eight years. Just in from the country. And here I-in the end, I accepted in Chicago, because I felt I could bring my small family there and I could make a place for us. And so I joined the, I went to Chicago and I got a little apartment in Hyde Park in South Chicago, next to the public school that was next to the University of Chicago. Because I thought the public school next to the 00:20:00 University of Chicago will be good, because it's going to be all kids from graduate students at the University of Chicago. Because at that time, the Chicago public schools were really bad, 35 years ago. And I started this program in fibers. It was fiber and material studies. And they didn't have a papermaking program, per se. And I worked in the, I used the studio of an artist named Richard Hungerford and in exchange for some work I did for him so I could use his equipment. And I had a studio right, it was the Pikula building, which is right on, just two blocks from the museum. SL: Nice. MH: And I put the kids, I dropped Craney off at preschool, and I'd bring Amara to first grade. And then I'd park the car and get on a bus and take the bus to downtown Chicago. And I would be at school all day but leave around 5:30 on the bus. Pick up my car. The preschool had come and picked up Amara, the older daughter, and brought her to the preschool. Picked up both kids and brought them to my little apartment. And we were three school girls in Chicago. It was a really, again, just this phenomenally challenging and engaging 00:21:00 experience. I had phenomenal teachers. John Livingstone, who just retired at the end of last year. Ann Wilson. These are absolute international leaders in the field of textiles or fiber and material studies. And they, unlike Tim Barrett, they were not at all interested in any of the technical stuff around craft. They were interested entirely in concept. And they were demanding from the get go in ways that I had never been pushed. And I thought, the first semester, I thought I'm not going to be able to do this. This is beyond my pay grade. Like I cannot answer these questions. They were challenging, but they were generous. Over the course of two years, they opened up the world to me. And you know I came with a lot of skill, but I'd lived in some ways in a very sheltered environment. But the environment I needed to grow, to gain the capacity to go to a place like the Art Institute in Chicago. And going to the Art Institute 00:22:00 in Chicago, I was the only person with, it's not that way anymore, but no one had children. None of the teachers had children. No one. SL: Wow. MH: I mean, I can remember being taken to task by teachers who I truly admired, being told that because I don't come out at night I wasn't taking full advantage of the program and blah, blah, blah. But I was there all day, you know. And other people would come at three in the afternoon and be there all night. But it was like, oh, God, I was up all night because Amara was throwing up. This was not a go. There was just no room for that part of a woman's life. Zero. And that has really changed. And that has changed in, I mean, there are plenty of women and young families, men with young families that are in graduate school there now. And that followed me. But I was there at a time when 00:23:00 nobody was doing that. SL: How did that feel to be the only person with children juggling- MH: Well, you know, luckily for me, I have always been a little out of it, and just engaged in whatever I was engaged in. So I didn't also have a lot of time to be like pissed off or worried about it. I was there. I wanted to do it. I was cognizant of what was essential. It wasn't hard for me to go home to my kids at night because I wanted to. It also wasn't hard for me to be all day in my studio like mucking around with whatever the challenges were that were being thrown at me. And I was aware that there wasn't, that I didn't have peers in that way. I didn't think, that didn't make me angry. It made me a little bit 00:24:00 self-conscious, like maybe I shouldn't be there. There was a little bit of that. But mostly I was, I think that I was also, I was a shy person. I was really engaged in the work. And there just wasn't a lot of time. And in retrospect, I think that was a lucky thing to be naive. I was socially naive. I could feel, I knew I was the only one that was doing it like this. But I didn't think, what the heck, or that's not fair. I just thought, I've got to get there, I've got to do this. And I also felt shy around, you know, it's a very, the Art Institute draws students who are really ambitious, who are really well educated, who are really sophisticated thinkers. And I was not leading the pack in any of those arenas. Because I had lived in a different way. It wasn't that I didn't have capacity to engage. I didn't have self confidence in the things that I knew being as valuable as someone that had 00:25:00 art speak down, which I did not. But I'm so grateful. It was such an important place for me to be because of the kinds of challenges that, intellectually I was challenged in ways that I had never come close to, but that I had been sort of, I'd been a little bit groomed for by Naomi Schedl. But they were really like direct. She was grandmotherly. She was nurturing. They were, we don't want to hear about that, what about-And it was challenging. I never thought I should leave. I never thought that. I was on full scholarship. I think my naivete served me. SL: Did you have support? You said that you were there with your children, and you were at school in the daytime and then you were with your children in the evenings. Did you have other family nearby or anything? MH: No. No. But you know, women can do a lot of things. I approached it like this. We're three school girls in Chicago. We're all in school. And my oldest daughter ended 00:26:00 up going to the Art Institute in Chicago for her graduate work. And both of my daughters believe, think of Chicago as a kind of home. They don't remember it, they don't remember stress, that they've shared with me, at least. So somehow we figured it out. Somehow. But as far as the paper goes, I was using paper. The first year I was determined, I brought a lot of paper with me that I had made with Tim. And I was making paper in this other artist's studio. And then I decided oh, I can't, it's too much. And there was a store called Aiko's, a very famous paper importer from Chicago. And they don't exist anymore. But they were just a few blocks from where my studio was. So I just started buying paper. And the things that I made with the paper were very textile-like. It was more than ever an extension of a textile aesthetic, more 00:27:00 than a paper aesthetic or more than-and coming to paper not through printmaking or a book, but coming to it through textiles is a really different orientation. It's an extension of a certain palette. And the limitations are far less rigid. In printmaking, you need a substrate that will be there after the revolution, right? You need a piece of paper that will be archival to hold your very important ideas forever in the museum. In fiber and material studies, you have a much different relationship with materials. And textiles have always been understood to be impermanent. And so while permanence is an issue, it's a different kind of issue than it is for printmakers. So I think that having learned paper from perhaps the most important and generous paper craftsman of my time, Tim Barrett, in the west, at least, but actually been educated as an artist in fiber and material studies programs, was a remarkably lucky combination. Because I was given an opportunity to understand the importance and beauty of fine craft. And 00:28:00 then I was expected to break all the rules, all at the same time. And I think one without the other would have been something perhaps okay, but it would have been very different in that I've met very few people that have that exact combination. There are people that learn paper through fibers programs, but not from somebody like Tim Barrett. SL: Okay. Is that why you decided not to go, you said you were encouraged to do your MFA in printmaking at Iowa? But can you talk a little bit about why you decided not to? MH: Well, my thesis show for my MA was, I was silk-screening on textiles and on paper. And I was making things that were framed that were like pages or maps or referencing paper documents. And the same kinds of marks were used on repeat pattern on yardage. And I was using cotton velveteens and things that really soaked up the color. And so I was using these printmaking techniques. And I was working pretty hard, and it was a reasonably good show. And I think they, you know, people like to keep people around. But I knew 00:29:00 that that particular faculty that was there perhaps wasn't the best faculty for me to work with. But more than that, I wasn't going to go to, I thought, I can't go to graduate school. I need to make money. Because it seemed clear that in my personal life, I was going to become responsible for my little family. And I wasn't seeing it as a printmaker. And I thought, I had been teaching art, I had been a part time art teacher at their little private school. And I thought, I'll be a teacher, and I can still make stuff. That was my intention. And then my mentor, Naomi Schedl, she just told me, apply to these four programs. And I just did what she said because I was too-because she was, because I did what she said. I was just-I did what she said. I didn't think, now I'm going to seek out the best graduate programs in 00:30:00 the country. She named them for me and felt that that's where I should go. And then when I got full scholarship, well then I thought, I mean, why would you stay in Iowa when you could have full scholarship to this hot shot art school, even though I didn't know what it meant, really entirely. And even though I didn't have, I wasn't driven by blind ambition, I needed to go to the best school on the face of the earth. So I was really well-mentored and taken care of by generous educators and mentors. And I give really full credit. I never would have applied to those four schools on my own. Out of lack of self-confidence. But also out of just pure practicality. Like, are you kidding? I can't afford that. And at the end of it, what will I do? So I owe a great debt to Naomi Schedl and Tim Barrett, to both of them. SL: So after 00:31:00 you graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago, then you ended up getting a teaching job. MH: Well what happened is Naomi, she, I applied for jobs and I didn't get a job. And then she invited me back and I became like an adjunct. So I taught for two years in Iowa. And then through the grapevine I heard about, it was an adjunct job at Macalester, but a really good one. And honestly, somebody slipped a little note under the door of my apartment and said, "You should apply for this. Somebody called me and I'm not going to. You should." And I did. (SL laughs) And I thought, oh, yeah, I want to be in Minnesota because the schools are really good for the kids and my family's there. And if I'm going to do this on my own, I would 00:32:00 like them to know family. And Macalester is an excellent school. I knew that from being in Minnesota. And I was offered that position. And I took it without hesitation. It was a small job. It was teach three classes a year. It was nine thousand dollars or something, or less than that. But it didn't even occur to me that I shouldn't take it. I thought this is a really good opportunity and I can be part time, so I can have a domestic life and I can have a studio life. And the people that were teaching at Macalester then were just really incredible people. Jerry Rudquist was the head of the department. And the whole faculty at that time was just an incredibly, a group of really fine human beings. Great, committed educators. Really good artists. 00:33:00 And it was an experience where I really learned to teach. And I learned to teach among masterful educators who were nice to each other. Very rare. (laughs) And it was a really good experience. And I ran the fibers program. By the time I left it, the fibers program was graduating, 60 percent of all arts majors were fibers majors. SL: Oh, wow. MH: And we had papermaking equipment in the room and we had, it was a big, I was able to make it into a bigger job than it was when I started. And during those years that I was at Macalester, which was 18 years, I raised the kids. I was the artist in residence at Minneapolis Institute of Art, I mean, at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. I got real involved with the Minneapolis Institute of Art textile collection. I became engaged with the program at the Perpich Center for arts education, in which they had a small group of artists from different disciplines who worked with educators in upstate Minnesota 00:34:00 to design arts across the curriculum, working with like artists would come into the school and then they would get somebody like me to be a navigator. So you would be a translator between art culture and school culture to help build a program which was more than a one-hit wonder with a visiting artist. And I learned, I mean, I learned things that I use every single day in the classroom now through that program of learning to, we were given information from Brown and Harvard where they're doing all this information on art education. And we were to take this really new stuff that was coming out of research around creative education and implement it in upstate public schools that were often dealing with pretty difficult problems, like public schools on reservations in northern Minnesota, or schools that had transient students, or students in North Minneapolis. So we were working with a great diversity of educators and 00:35:00 students and parents and administrators. And we were learning to be coaches and learning to be master educators and translators. It was a really powerful education and a really wonderful thing. So I was able to be in my part time world, I had a lot of really rich and interesting experiences. And, over time, I built up a paper studio. I got all the equipment that I needed and I started getting commissions for making paper with book artists. And book artists that had some wonderful reputations. And the Minnesota Center for Book Arts is a good, strong national community, and it was a great platform for me to work. And so I was making stuff. And I think I built enough of a reputation or enough of a career that in 2006 I received a senior Fulbright research award. And that year I went to Ghana. And my children were in college, and you know, it was just like, again, like I can't really say I planned anything. But I gravitated toward experiences that were both challenging and really deeply life-changing. Like working for the Perpich Center was important. Working at Macalester with the group of educators and artists that 00:36:00 were there, that first ten years, especially, that I was there, they set a standard which I would never, many people go through an entire career of higher ed teaching and never work with such an outstanding community of artists teaching artists. SL: What made the community so great, do you think? MH: Well, half of us were part time. Everybody was fully engaged as a maker. The department chair, Jerry Rudquist, he was a very good leader. He was respectful. He was a highly regarded painter. He's a very important painter in the Twin Cities and beyond, but there he occupied a large and important space. And he put his arms around us. Like he believed in us. And it wasn't competitive. Macalester is a good, small liberal arts college. It has the potential to create community in ways that large institutions are more challenged at. I think that it was, it changed over time as people left. But I think it was just a really, I think Jerry Rudquist gathered, by the force of his own personality and his own value system, gathered a group 00:37:00 of people together that were just outstanding. And I learned how to be in higher ed around them. So it was good. SL: And you said that you kind of expanded your role over time. Were you teaching papermaking in the beginning? Or did you- MH: Yeah, well, lucky for me, I could do whatever I wanted to. It was Fibers 1 and 2, and then after that it was Principles of Art and a senior seminar. And I, maybe it was both the times and also being a small school, but I could set an agenda. So based on whatever it was I was interested in, so the curriculum followed. And because I think I have an understanding of how to build community, we created things between the institutions that I was also working at. So we started programs at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts that were, in which my students were engaged there professionally. Or we built equipment at Macalester that was donated to the Book Arts Center, which gave my students free access. Or we had all these things going on like this. And Macalester was really open to it in a way that I think it doesn't, even at Macalester, it doesn't happen that way anymore. It was the times, but also the nature of being a small, a smaller school with a high standard. And the students were pretty brilliant and well taken care of, you know. And somehow international. SL: So this was in the '90s. MH: Yeah. SL: What was it about that time, do you think, that allowed for that community and- MH: Well, there was a lot less documentation. I don't know 00:38:00 what your experience is here, but for me, even in the ten years I've been here, the level of documentation has quadrupled. So you could just do things because they were right and you were trusted. You were trusted that we hired you based on your record and your work, your education. Now, go at it. Bring your best stuff to the table. We trust it. And if you didn't do it, you would probably be taken to task somehow. But now I feel like things need to be, like the word "metrics" was never part of my, until I can here, and even only a few years ago. Like everything is about metrics now. At least, in my experience here. Not essentially in my classroom, but the leadership in the School of Human Ecology is entirely about metrics. And how many people are employed afterwards, and how many students are happy with the class, and how many students are happy with this thing you did. So everything is about-there isn't a level of trust. Not just in me, but in the system. And there are layers of administration now that are 00:39:00 like always checking. (laughter) And that, I don't know, maybe that is important sometimes. But I find it burdensome and deadening as a-I mean, if you think essentially what we're doing is teaching poetry, right? Material poetry. If you have to take poetry and put it in metrics, everything is like-you know, it's the wiggly science, right? So I suppose there's a lot of reasons. And it's surely my experience is echoed over and over by many people that came up in this time period. But again, I was so lucky to be at Macalester when I was. And even applying for the Fulbright, I was in a mix of people that were ambitious scholars, and who were in the world. And even as an adjunct, I was treated as a full-fledged creative scholar and encouraged to go after stuff like that, and given time off to do things. And you 00:40:00 know, I think I was put in a mix, I found myself in the mix at Macalester where applying for a Fulbright would be the kind of thing that you would do. And I think in a different mix, I might not have thought oh, should I do that, you know. And that was the third time I had applied for a Fulbright. The first two times I was a finalist but I didn't get selected. And you know, I went on the Fulbright when I was fifty. And it was perfect. You know, it was lucky. SL: And can you tell me about how that project came to be? Did you propose that? MH: Well, what happened is, I was always really interested in African textiles. And my oldest daughter, she went to Bard. And she did her senior thesis project on African print cloth. (laughs) She didn't intend to follow me in that way, but that's how it worked. And one of the people that was there was Onchani Otoby. And he was one of her teachers. So all this stuff was kind of in the air. And she 00:41:00 went to Ghana on a study abroad for a semester. And then she invited me to join her for a couple of weeks at the end. And so I joined her in 2003 and we traveled around. And then I came back. And I met some faculty there. And then when I came back, I was teaching at an art school in South Carolina. And we learned that, and Amara was down there with me. And we learned that, Amara is my daughter, we learned that this faculty member was at Athens. This Ghanaian faculty. So we invited him to Penland to come as a visiting artist. And then, anyway, during that visit he said, "You should apply for a Fulbright. I'll sponsor you." So again, I was lucky. You know, it was my daughter introduced me and then all these things happened. But it was also driven by, you know, my daughter invited me and we made friends, and then we invited-so you know, it's like learning to live in a way where you keep your arms open. So I applied to study, essentially what my pitch was is that my work as an artist was informed by textiles in a place 00:42:00 where textiles were ubiquitous but not valued. And I wanted to go to a place where textiles were ubiquitous and deeply valued and embedded in the culture. And there was more parts to it, but fundamentally that was it. So it was a research grant, so I didn't have to teach. And I studied and lived with traditional makers. And then I met the people at the university who were in the art department. And I offered to teach a workshop as a way of getting to know my peers, university-trained artists. So I ran a papermaking workshop and I ran a symposium on contemporary art for graduate students. And there were 40 students in the paper workshop. SL: Oh, that sounds like it's pretty big. MH: It was really big. We had no running water. We had to carry water. We had spotty electricity. Now, the facilities have improved dramatically in the last decade. But at that time, it was very modest. They were third-year printmaking students taught by a graduate 00:43:00 student. And so we had them bring the, you can make paper out of any cellulose fiber. So we started making paper out of-and it's a rainforest, so there's a lot of cellulose fiber. So we were making paper and using local material. We were beating it by hand and cooking it on a coal fire. And I had some small equipment that the mac students had made for me. And we made paper. It was rough, but we made it. And then I thought, I had brought a box of Kozo, which is the mulberry fiber that comes from Japan or from Asia, that makes like rice paper. I had brought some with me as a studio supply. So I decided to bring it to the workshop to improve the, I thought that if we add this to the plantain and the cashew, it's going to give strength and 00:44:00 maybe, you know. And it did. They exponentially improved the papers, and still there was this sense of place. I mean, it was a really successful workshop. The students were just incredibly excited. And so when we finished after six weeks, I went to the forestry department and said, "Hey, look. See this Kozo, this mulberry from Japan? Do we have anything in Ghana which is like this? Because it has the exact properties that are necessary for making a really beautiful sheet of paper." And they pulled out these posters. "Danger! Pull mulberry. If you see this plant, burn it! Call us!" (SL laughs) Well it turned out that in 1969 someone had brought 14 plants and planted them in the forest preserve near Kumasi, where I was staying, with the idea of starting that out, or checking out a paper industry. And the paper, but then there was a coup, and a project like this got lost in the mix, and the plants just languished. And then there was a drought. And then there were forest fires. And then the forest canopy was razed. And now this plant had become the most insidious non-indigenous plant in the central forest region of Ghana, the very plant that had made the most beautiful paper in the history of the world. And I knew all about it, because I had studied with Tim. And we had made paper with, only this plant 00:45:00 now was just growing under the hot sun in this really fertile soil in this incredible environment for 30 years. It was out of control. It was like from land of the giants. (laughter) And I thought, oh my God. I really was the only, no one was thinking about paper. And I came here. I joined the faculty here. And at the end of the first semester, or just before the fall grants were due, the project grants, one of the people assigned me said, "That's fine. We know you're a good teacher. But if you don't get a project going, like right away, that's the only way you get to stay is you need that research money, you need-" So I wrote a grant to go back to Ghana to start this papermaking project. And I got funded. And in January I was back in Ghana and I started the work. And this university has just been incredibly generous to me with this project. So for ten years, I've been going and coming with funding 00:46:00 from the project grants and other sources. And as the paper developed, the question was, what are you going to be? And the first answer is, well, you should be a development project and help the poor people of Africa. But I didn't want to be a development project. And I was very-I had a lot trepidation about going down that road. And I knew a lot of artists there, contemporary artists who were rising stars internationally. And I would drink wine with them and think well, what should we do? And we decided to start a small press, which we called Take Time Press. And we decided that we should do a high-end book project, and that should be the first real project with the paper. And we asked Koo Nimo, who's a declared national living treasure, if we could use his life's work as the content. And he agreed. So now we had a reason to work. And we had standards to work toward. Because it had to be printed on with intaglio and with letterpress. So 00:47:00 it was over the course of several years that the project developed. And with financing from the University of Wisconsin I was able to bring Ben Mandelson, who's a music producer, recorded most of the important musicians on the African continent, came for small money-in his world-because he knew that Koo Nimo was 80 years old and was a really important voice. And we recorded a CD. We produced the paper for the book. Pamela Clarkson and Atta Kwami produced the suite of prints, which is really the highlight of the book. The book was, the CD was recorded in Ghana, mastered in London, produced in Minneapolis, and the covers were made with Ghanaian paper by graduate students in Wisconsin. We used African cultural studies linguists graduate students to check our, to help us with the translation of things, from English to Twi, and Twi to English. We were able to work between localities, to have it be an international collaboration that celebrated a really specific place. And that book is now in 18 major collections. It's in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian. We're really super proud of it. And other artistic projects like that are in progress. After that book was completed, I received 00:48:00 tenure on the basis of that project, I'm sure. SL: And it's called Listen, Listen. MH: Yes. I mean, I'm super proud of it. And I think the book itself is quite handsome. But what the book presents is this international artistic collaboration. And that is, that's what was collected, more than the book itself. The book is handsome. But if that book was handsome and about the prairie outside of Wisconsin, outside of Madison, it wouldn't be in those collections. It was bringing people to the table that don't ordinarily get invited. It was representing partnerships that were truly international, and truly grounded. Everybody had parts that were, this happened in Madison, this happened in Kumasi, this happened in Minneapolis, and with different players. And parts of it were extremely hard. It was some of the most hard work I've ever done, and also some of the most satisfying work. When you're in a room with people that are so different from you in every way, and all of a sudden everybody 00:49:00 understands-everybody understands-how beautiful something is. Like, everybody gets it. It's an exhilarating feeling. And conversely, there are a lot of times when we didn't understand each other at all, and where things got complicated because I was coming carrying the bag of money, and people didn't understand how much or little it was. And how that might go. It's very complicated working between economies, working between cultures, between gender expectations, ages. Even between media. Music is complicated right now because everything's shifting from one way of getting the information out to something else. So there were massive challenges that I'm incredibly grateful for being in the middle of. But there were times that were really hard, you know. But everybody's proud of it now. So then after that, I did a lot of teaching in Ghana. So I brought the papermaking- SL: Could I ask you one more question? MH: Yeah. SL: Who had the relationship with Koo Nimo? MH: Well, during the Fulbright year, I met artists. And it's a small community in Kumasi. So I met Atta Kwami and his wife, Pamela 00:50:00 Clarkson. And they introduced me to Koo Nimo. But Koo Nimo was in the mix of people that I hung out with. So he was friends of friends, and then he became my friend, or I became part of a small group of people in Kumasi in the arts, and he was in that group, somehow. SL: And you asked him if you could use his- MH: Yeah, and I asked him. And he didn't know what it really meant, a fine press book. He didn't really understand it. But he trusted us. And I think Atta Kwami, Atta Kwami is an important artist from Ghana and now internationally. And I'm sure that Atta Kwami was encouraging him to do it made a big difference. Yeah. But also it's a situation where having an affiliation with the University of Wisconsin, Madison gave me perhaps undue credibility, but it gave me credibility in that picture. So as a professor, he took me seriously. As a paper artist, I'm not sure he would have really understood what I was talking about. SL: Sure. MH: But he understood that the University of Wisconsin was backing this. And that made 00:51:00 him-so when that book was finally published in 2011, I worked with Henry Drewal. And Henry is an Africanist here, and a beloved elder on campus and has been a mentor to me. And I'm so grateful for it. And he had the vision that we bring all these people to campus and celebrate Ghanaian arts, and use the publication of the book as a reason to do all these things. And he knew how to do that. And I learned so much from him about how to find campus resources and use them. And it was, again, like everything, it was really hard to figure, we were working between four or five departments, and then we were engaged in the community. But in the end, probably two thousand people on campus had some interface with Koo Nimo and Pamela and Atta. We had this beautiful exhibition where all kinds of people from the African community in Madison came. 00:52:00 Because they knew Koo Nimo. SL: That's very cool. MH: Yeah. And then we did a tour, Koo Nimo and I to Old Town Stage in Chicago, Macalester College, Saint Ben's, Northwestern. Places that I had connections and that had African studies. And so we would find the African musicians on campus. And then they would practice Koo Nimo's songs. And then Koo Nimo would come and they would practice. And then we would have concerts and some kind of like discourse on stage. And because Koo Nimo's so beloved, everybody knows him. People just came out. The Ghanaian community came out in force everywhere we went. It was really terrific. It was really neat. SL: How long was he in the US for this? MH: He was with us for three weeks. And then other 00:53:00 universities grabbed him. But he was with us, yeah, I think three weeks. SL: You mean- MH: In the Midwest. With me. In situations where I was taking care of him. SL: Got it. So you said that you have some other projects with Take Time Press in the works? MH: Well, I think, yeah. So we have other small book projects. I've done really a lot of teaching at all different levels of teaching. And then at this stage, we're trying to set up, we've created a foundation called the Krataa Foundation. Krataa is the Twi, the local language is Twi word for "paper." And it translates into English as "image of the soul." But it's the word for paper, amazingly. And we are trying to create now a self-sustaining, for-profit enterprise in which we can employ people to make paper and make paper objects for the marketplace. And first and foremost, for the Ghanaian marketplace. So we have a variety of things. We make gorgeous paper. We can make gorgeous stacks of paper for, if somebody needs them, for, if an artist needs them. But they can also be made into paper bags, which is big now in the air in Ghana, and other kinds of paper objects. I don't have any with me now because it was 00:54:00 going to rain. We're doing handbags and folders and small books and paper fans, Ghanaian paper fans. But we're also doing high-end interior design objects. So we're doing folding screens, lamps. But beautifully designed objects that are riffing off of textile pattern. So they're capturing textile pattern and simplified, we want them to be grounded in a Ghanaian aesthetic, but feel contemporary. And what my goal is, is to get at this stage, to get Ghanaian funding, to get a kind of venture capitalist buy-in. There's money in Ghana, it's just not well-distributed. And that's what I've been working on most recently is building that activity which is transient. It happens when I'm there. When I'm not there, it doesn't happen. Because nobody's making money from it. So we have a serious partnership now with the forestry commission that shepherds the land that this stuff is growing 00:55:00 on, and with the university. And we're close to getting some serious funding from Ghanaian sources, which would bring me in as a trainer to train people to, so these things have to happen together. In order to get a commission for ten thousand paper bags, we need to hire people and train them to be good paper makers. They have to be paid. They have to be paid to stay on the job and produce it. It has to happen all at once. So we have small capacity, but we have a lot of interest. But we don't have any, we don't have that underwriting. And now we're talking about a business. So now we're stepping outside of research. And also I feel like the University of Wisconsin has done a lot. And that it's time, if Ghanaian, somebody in the Ghanaian culture, government, whatever, a business, has to step up with some money. Otherwise, we're patrons. And what I would like to pass this whole thing off to Ghanaians. And I have a young man who's been working with me for many years now. And he's a graduate of the art department. And he is a highly skilled papermaker who would very likely take on a leadership 00:56:00 position. SL: He's a graduate of which art department? This one? MH: No, in Kumasi. But now we're hoping he can come here to do a master's in, an MFA here. In Ghana, you need the PhD, even in the arts. So I would like him to come here and study, and then he would go back and manage the program. But anyway, we're actively seeking funding to make a self-sustaining for-profit entity based on the paper. And we've built some really significant partnerships with government agencies. And we're making inroads to private. We're asking for some serious money, like real money to set something up. And this is brand new territory for me which I can't, I get really anxious around. But I have good help in Ghana. So that's the focus right now. We're making these beautiful objects. We're making paper. We have, I have books going in my own studio which are related to Take Time Press. But fundamentally what we're focused on now is trying to get this thing to be, not to be dependent on grants from this university. And what we've shown is that it's viable. It's a viable initiative. It can. We just need those start-up funds. So I think what I'd like to do is perhaps segue a little bit to teaching papermaking here. SL: That would be great. Actually, before you talk about that, how did you get here in the first place? Because you were teaching at Macalester-- MH: Well, I had received the Fulbright when I was fifty years old. That was my fiftieth year, in Ghana. And then I came home, I thought okay, this is it. You either make your 00:57:00 peace with your position as an adjunct, which I actually, many days I often wish I could go back to being an adjunct. Because you don't have to go to any committee meetings. There's different variables. But it was a good job, and a good experience. But there was a cash flow problem, right? SL: Sure. MH: And I thought, all right, throw your name in the hat. And there were five jobs that I applied for. I had five interviews. I was not that, I didn't really fully understand the difference between a small liberal arts college and a big research-one university. I learned the hard way. Or the good way. But I applied because it was a job that had a description that I knew I could teach those things, and those are the things that my scholarship is based on. So I was offered this job and it had a proximity to Saint Paul. And you know, your first question, where did you grow up? Well, I grew up in the Midwest. I'm a 00:58:00 Midwestern gal. And I was pleased to take a job which wasn't far, far away. And the position is located in the School of Human Ecology, which is the old home economics. And it really should by all means, our program should be in the art department. But it's a historical line it follows, right? So the people I teach with are all trained as artists in textiles. Not as designers or as human ecologists. So it's an interesting, it's an interesting place to find yourself. But also, I had started out in Iowa City in a similar program, so it wasn't completely unknown to me. And then when I got here, I was, I joined the African Studies program, which has been really lovely. And it's full of people that, they model what really university life should be. Because it's across the curriculum. Everybody's listening to each other. And then Jim Escalante in the art department has just been nothing but wonderful. 00:59:00 He's a wonderful colleague. He's a generous, intelligent, skillful. I just couldn't say enough about him that's nice. I respect him immensely. And he made room for me. So right away I was able to teach classes, teach paper. I mean, I can't remember how that worked, if I approached him or he approached me, but it was so welcoming and organic. Then I became an affiliate of the art department. SL: Because, I just want to clarify- MH: Yeah. SL: So the paper making had historically been in the art department. MH: Yeah. There's no, yeah. So the paper making is in the art department. And it comes out of, as you are I'm sure are finding out, this rich and important history in book arts here. And I feel like I've been able to contribute to the kinds of things that go on, because of my really expansive education under Tim Barrett. So what Walter Hamady started in paper making was really focused on letterpress printing on cotton pages for the kind of books that he was promoting and that he was teaching. And he made this tremendous impact on the world, on the art world. He created book arts, in some ways. Because his students went out and started programs all over the country. But 01:00:00 under Tim, I learned perhaps a more expansive, the more expansive possibilities of working with paper. Different fibers and different, and really it was a deep engagement with the technical aspects of using different fibers and what that means and what it can do. And the students that were my peers when I studied under Tim were artists who ended up doing a whole range of things beyond books. So when I came to this program to teach in the fibers program, I wasn't brought in because of paper. And in the interview process they said, somebody that was in the interview process said, "When you come here, perhaps you'll stop with the paper and really focus on the textile." And I said no, I wouldn't do that. And I didn't think it through. And then later I remember driving home thinking well, I probably won't get 01:01:00 that job. (laughter) But somehow, I did. So I teach students who are primarily over in Human Ecology who are interested in fashion, and the fashion industry. And they're primarily from the Midwest, but not entirely. But they have a work ethic. They are practical. Their parents have said, they're creative, but their parents couldn't possibly imagine them studying painting or sculpture. But they've watched Project Runway or something like it, and they have a vision for being able to do creative work through this industry. The world isn't exactly like that, right? And I wasn't brought in to teach fashion. So I have a kind of lucky position, because, well, no one told me this, but I decided that my job was to help to expand these students' awareness of what is possible with cloth. And paper is for me an obvious extension of what cloth can be. So when I get these little fashion designers in my paper 01:02:00 making, they come over to paper because they like me as a teacher. They don't want to be a paper maker, per se. They can reinterpret the projects that they have learned how to do in their sewing class and their weaving. They can reinterpret the work which is traditional textile or fashion-based in this new medium. And all of a sudden, they can think about their work in new ways, because it does new things. Even though conceptually it's the same starting point. And it's super fun for me to work with students that are creative and smart and ambitious, but had never considered this particular way of working. And to show them what's happening, and what they can do. Or to bring them to the artist book library and show all the artist books that have to do with textiles and cloth and thread. Or have them try this medium in which they take all their castoff cloth, throw it in the Hollander beater, make pulp out of it, make this beautiful paper, which had been cloth. All of a sudden, it's mixing up the soup in a new way. And they're smart, and they're interested, and they're creative. And they're beginners in that way, with me. And that's good, because they've got nothing to lose. Whereas a printmaker coming in, and I get a lot of printmakers and I like 01:03:00 working with the printmakers, but they have a lot more on the line. I mean, paper is the fundamental substrate of their entire worldview. And so, well, that might be kind of expansive. But paper occupies a space that they understand, and it's a construct that's historic. And what's really fun about teaching here is that I get a mix of art students and design students. So I get these design students that can pattern anything. They can take anything, any object, and make a pattern and then make a thing that fits over it. And they work hard. And they follow recipes. They know how to do, but they're not so skillful or experienced at the poetry, right? Or at critique as it has to do with idea. The art students, on the other hand, often come with much less actual skill. Like they don't like following recipes. They haven't like, they're not, they can't even imagine how to make a pattern like 01:04:00 this. It's so technical. But in a crit, they can read a work and see things that the design students can never see. And between the two camps, what happens is really, really fun. Because they're in awe of each other. Like the design students hear an art student read their work. And they're like, "You saw all that?" And the art students are like, "Will you teach me how to do this?" You know. (laughter) And it's a really lovely, when it works it's a beautiful community in my classroom of disparate starting points. And I feel as if that's one of the contributions that I've been able to bring to the paper making history here, which is strong and rich, is that I've been able to bring a lot of people into that studio that would never have come into that studio. And then I've been able to extend the ways that people think about paper. And I give full credit to Tim Barrett, because I'm just sharing what I learned from him. SL: That's exciting. Well I know that you also get some other students in, besides the art and design students. I know like for example I-School 01:05:00 students sometimes take your courses. At least I know of one who's going to be taking your class. MH: Oh, yeah, I didn't know that. I haven't been aware that any high school students have taken my class. SL: No, I'm sorry. I-School. MH: Oh, I-School. Oh, yeah. But it doesn't happen as often as it should. I don't understand why. But maybe your program is kind of pre-scripted. You don't have time for it. But I do sometimes have other students. And again, first of all, making a sheet of paper isn't hard. Making a good sheet of paper appropriate to the purpose at hand, as you heard me carry on about, that's a different story, right? So it's an accessible way of working. Everyone understands paper in a sense. You think you do, right? And so it's an accessible art form with limitless possibility. And that just for me, a beautiful stack of paper is enough. So if I get a student who really just wants to make 100 beautiful sheets of red paper, or wants to make 100 sheets of paper, each a 01:06:00 different color, for me, that is enough. Or if I get a student, an art student with an ambitious and complex idea that they're trying to use paper to illustrate that idea, or to share, you know, there's room for all of that. And I think of a class being successful when all of that is happening. And that everybody isn't following a kind of agenda that is- That being said, there are things that I, there are ways of experiencing paper that Tim Barrett made us do which I complained about. (SL laughs) And now I use them every semester in my classes, because I realize how, you know, 30 years later, it's still important to me. SL: What kinds of things? MH: Like doing a beater test. Like taking a fiber and making a sheet of paper in 30-minute increments and seeing all of the different physical qualities of that paper. You know, a zillion small things that are related to craft and material understanding. Which I was bitterly impatient with 01:07:00 at the time, but were so important, foundational. I really love teaching paper. And I really love teaching. And I think the best part, I think my biggest contribution on this campus is the teaching that I do in the paper studio. But maybe in the other studios, too. But I feel most proud of that. SL: I'm curious. You sound like there's a lot of freedom in the classroom. So how do you kind of structure your classes? Like how much do you actually teach by demo or- MH: What I do is I start always with, I start with two things that happen simultaneously. One is a historical introduction, or it can be contemporary work. But how are people using this material? And I have assignments that address that. And then information gathering, hands-on information gathering. So I say look, you've got to stick with me this month. I'm going to tell you what to do, and you do it. And at the end, you're going to 01:08:00 have this small portfolio and this is what's going to be in it. And my dream is that somewhere along that continuum, something bites into your imagination and you think, I wonder if I could do this with that. So then the second part is trying-I'm talking about beginning students here-trying something small that they thought of during the information-gathering period, which was structured by me. So it has to be something coming out of that information gathering. So it's something that they know about now. They have some solid foundational information about process and material that they want to build on in a personal way. And usually after that, it's just like not a problem. I mean, I have things on my syllabus that say we're going to do this and this and this. But by that point, if somebody has a powerful idea, I want them to do that. And then what happens is the work is supported with read and discuss, and look at images. I mean, I want people to be informed about what is happening. But I 01:09:00 honestly think that I have this limited bag of tricks, which I want to generously share. And then I want to be there to support work that I couldn't have imagined myself. And I don't want to create boundaries by imagining the work being done by my assignments. SL: Sure. MH: So I'm an experienced teacher, and I have to make judgment calls. Now I'm sure that perhaps the people that review me at the School of Human Ecology might not listen to this, (SL laughs) but you know, my way of teaching is we need some kind of solid foundation, and then we need freedom to take risks. Some things aren't going to work out. That doesn't mean you fail. If you can tell me why, tell me what you would do next, tell me if you had more time what you would do, that's success. Because then you're working outside of what you already know. And in creative work, if everything is prescribed and then assessed, it's happening within a construct in which it's not really creative. So I have to work in a construct which is asking me to assess students in certain ways. And I have to push those boundaries as much as I 01:10:00 can and believe that the students are going to want to work as hard as possible. And I think if I believe that, and of course most students do want to work as hard as possible. And most students have never been given the opportunity to do that. They've learned how to get an A. They've learned how to figure out what's expected and give that back. But they haven't had opportunities to take on risks that might not work. And I think that this is most important. I think I have to, as a teacher, I want to construct certain experiences in which people walk away with physical objects that they can be proud of. But it's easy to do that. So it's not like it's a free-for-all. But I have to make a decision for each student as the semester progresses. All right, you just step out right now and go for that. And a lot of times, it really works. I feel proud of what comes out of my classes. And I feel jazzed by it. 01:11:00 Like, I learn things. But it's, more and more harder to teach in that matter, because of the demands of the institution for-and if somebody fails and they don't like it, then they complain, it's, to me it's a defensible situation, but I have experienced the tension between a construct that is, in which numbers can show success and a way of teaching that I just described to you. And so a lot of what I think we have to do right now is navigate that as best we can. Because it's a great privilege to be here at this school and in general, to be a professor at a school like Wisconsin, or Macalester, it's a privilege. SL: Thank you, Mary. Is there anything that you want to add? Anything about, I know you talked a little bit about your, the next things that are happening in Ghana. But it sounds like we can end there. MH: Okay.