Printmaking Professor Melissa Harshman will display a large paper installation titled Hope at the Mid-America Print Council Conference, The Power of Print: Resistance, Revolution, & Resilience, from October 13-16, 2022 at Kent State University. The Mid-America Print Council Conference is second largest professional printmaking organization in the United States. The reception for the artwork will be held on Thursday October 13 from 1:30 - 3:30 PM.

Artwork Statement

Several years ago, I was motivated by the work of artist Michelle Samour to investigate pulp painting. I had been working with floral imagery in my prints and wanted to research how to use the same inspiration in handmade paper.

This piece is titled “Hope”. This work was thought up in reaction to the call for exhibitions by the Mid-America Print Council Conference that was to be held in October 2020. I proposed this piece to be displayed in response to the theme Power of Print: Resistance & Revolution. My idea for this work stemmed from the history of the red poppy flower. Poppies are a flower that symbolize peace, especially the red poppy which was called the Remembrance Poppy following World War I. The poppy is a resilient plant that grew in the war-torn soil after multiple bombings after the war. This is one of the reasons for the choice of this flower. The goal of the exhibition was to honor those who have died in the name of resistance. Each of the flowers have poppy seeds imbedded in the paper and the concept of the piece was that each flower could be planted and grow new flowers. 

During the past two years this piece has grown in significance for me. Worries about big issues such as the pandemic and global warming to personal issues for me and my family have kept me up at nights. The simple act of making these flowers was an outlet for me to be in the present moment, remind me to stay positive, and that we will get through these troubled times. Flowers have always been a love of mine and being outside in nature  has helped me to let go of my stress. These flowers are not only a way to honor those who have died, but now a way for me to give hope to all of us living in these “unprecedented times”.

Artist Bio

Melissa Harshman received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin- Madison in 1992. She has taught at the Lamar Dodd School of Art since 1993. Harshman has exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad. She was awarded a UGA Senior Faculty Research Grant in 2019 titled “Explorations in Papermaking”. She is one of the inaugural Art Lab Fellowship recipients from the University of Georgia for 2022/23. Her work was recently on display at the Hunderton Art Museum in Clinton, NJ in “Press +”. Upcoming exhibitions include “When Print meets Paper” at the Robert C. Williams Museum of papermaking in Atlanta, GA. She recently completed the Denbo Fellowship at Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center in Hyattsville, MD focusing on handmade paper. She will have work on display at the Impact 12 International Printmaking Conference in Bristol, England in September of 2022. Her work can be seen at http://melissaharshman.com.

About the Mid-America Print Council Conference

The mission of this conference is to leverage print media's historical role in multiples, distributed art, protest art, and popular culture, to generate an event that is timely and broadly relevant both culturally and artistically. Print media is a flexible field that continues to evolve and to have powerful connections to everyday life from grassroots organizations to commercial industries and the highest cultural institutions. We will draw on this rich history and the present state of the field to showcase the diversity of the media, artists, and cultural procedures involved in print media. Our goal is to especially engage youth, students, and emerging artists in this critical dialogue.