“Dangling Vines and Falling Stars”-41″x28″ mixed media on paper.
One of my favorite quotes is from Albert Einstein, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious…”
This new body of work has been influenced by my love of forests, mountains, streams, trees and rocks. Spending more time of late in the mountains and forests, I have come to realize the thing that fascinates me is the thought that these are nature’s “memory keepers”. Trees record the passing of time with embedded memory and history in their layers of rings, and rocks do likewise, in their layers of sediment. Peebles dropped in water create concentric rings that ripple out like a telling echo. They are not only beautiful in their visual sense but beautiful in their content which seems mysterious and intriguing to me, holding secrets of sorts which instills wonder, and awe. Where previously my work dealt with aspects of human memory now I am seeking to weave together human and nature’s memories to create a new experience and to quote the artist Francis Bacon, “…to deepen the mystery”. -Mary Hardy
EDUCATION
* 1989 Master’s of Art Education, University of South Alabama, Mobile, Alabama
* additional studio graduate work done at Arrowmont through the University of Tennessee
* 1979 B.S. Art Education, University of South Alabama, Mobile, Alabama
* career wide (1981 to date) numerous studio-based workshops taken with professors from;
Pratt Institute, New York, NY, Atlanta College of Art, GA, Pennsylvania Academy of Art, PA, Art Institute of
Chicago, IL, Savannah College of Art, GA, University of Houston, TX, University of Florida, FL, Louisiana Tech
University, Ruston, LA, Louisiana State University, LA, Auburn University, AL, University of Mississippi, MS,
Nichols State University, LA, University of California, Berkley, CA
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024 “Memory Keepers” Carol Robinson Gallery New Orleans, LA
2023 “Shifting Perception” Ohr-Okeefe Museum of Art Community Gallery Biloxi, MS
2021 “Wonderings and Wanderings” Eastern Shore Arts Center, Fairhope, AL
2020 “Layered Wanderings” Carol Robinson Gallery, New Orleans, LA2019 “Bits and Pieces;Dream, Memory, Myth, Lore” The Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center, Ocean Springs, MS
2018 “Varying Images; Same Path” South Arkansas Arts Center El Dorado, AR
2016 “Inspirations From the Collection Box” Smith & Lens Art Gallery, Bay St. Louis, MS
2016 “Under, Over, Reconfigured” Jones County Junior College, Ellisville, MS
2014 “Surfaces and Symbols” Carol Robinson Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2012 “An Inventory of Images; My Alphabet”, Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, Gulfport, MS
2008 “An Empty Presence”, Wiregrass Museum of Art, Dothan, AL
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS AND AWARDS
2024 Masur Museum of Art 61st National Juried Competition Monroe, LA
2023 USM National Juried Painting Exhibition, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS
2023 MS Committee of National Museum of Women in the Arts membership annual show BEST IN SHOW
2021 “Mississippi Garden of Rhythm and Blues” Mississippi School for the Arts Brookhaven, MS
2021 Invitational Group show at Studio Waveland and Gallery Waveland, MS
2020 “21” an online exhibit by The Little Yellow Building Art Studio & Gallery, Brookhaven, MS thelittleyellowbuilding.com
2020 “Hope” an online exhibit by The Little Yellow Building Art Studio & Gallery, Brookhaven, MS thelittleyellowbuilding.com