User:Wisconsin dormouse/Mary Hood



Mary Hood (born December 26, 1966 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American artist and printmaker. She lives and works in Tempe, Arizona, United States.

Education
Mary Hood initially attended the Milwaukee Area Technical College from 1986-1989, pursuing studies in commercial art. In 1990 she attended the Ringling College of Art and Design where she trained as a printmaker and painter, receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1993. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts, University of Dallas, where she studied studio art from 1995-1998. In 2004, Hood continued her professional technical studies in printmaking, completing a certificate program in aluminum plate lithography techniques at the Tamarind Institute.

Artwork
Hood employs both traditional and digital printmaking tools and techniques in her studio practice. She also creates artists books, sculpture, video and installation works. Hood's recent work examines the mystery and symbolic secrecy of utopian Arcadia, historically celebrated as an unspoiled and harmonious wilderness devoid of the impact of human civilization. Without becoming too didactic, Hood's narratives allude to themes within contemporary culture that express a political or social point of view, using animals as a metaphor for human behaviors and contemporary events. Hood states "The act of rendering visible the difficult, the uncertain, and the unconscious helps me to understand how the precarious nature of life can be examined and how it makes us feel."

Exhibitions and collections
Hood’s work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and the world including the International Print Center New York, NYC; Site: Brooklyn , Brooklyn, NY; Artist Printmaker Research Collection : Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX; Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University , Hyderabad, India; Iluro Foundation, Mataro, Spain; McMaster Museum of Art , Ontario, Canada; Gallery of Art Conservation Institute. Split, Croatia; Jeonbuk Yeasul Art Center, Jeonbuk, South Korea; Tama Art Museum , Tokyo, Japan; Contemporary Art Gallery, Krakow, Poland; Amateras Foundation , Sophia, Bulgaria; and Hyvinkää Art Museum , Hyvinkää, Finland. Hood is also the recipient of numerous residencies, publications, and awards for her work. Hood is represented by Artisan Gallery in Wisconsin.

Community scholarship
Hood uses printmaking to initiate community-focused projects such as RIPPLE (2005), for Katrina evacuees in Arizona; DITTO (2006), a public art project, and Map(ing) , an on-going collaborative project established in 2009 between Native and Indigenous artists and ASU graduate students. In 2012 Mary was awarded the Annual Evelyn Smith Endowed Professorship to support her community scholarship, as well as the 2008 Faculty Achievement Award and the 2006 Award for Public Scholarship, all awarded by the ASU School of Art Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts.

Academic career
Hood has served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at both Carnegie Mellon University and the University of North Texas. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art in Fine Arts at Arizona State University, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, where she teaches intaglio and digital processes in printmaking. Hood has previously taught workshops in bookbinding and printmaking at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Craft Center, Paper Routes and the University of Dallas in Texas, Appalachian State University, Sam Houston State University, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, the Redline Milwaukee Gallery, and the Seacourt Print Workshop in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland.