This past Friday, SPA art students had the opportunity to hear this alumnae discuss her choice of color and artistic medium while on a gallery walk of the exhibition. In addition to Wark’s art, the display included paintings and sculpture from recent graduates.

“I attended the Summit School fifty years ago,” explains Mary Ann Barrows Wark. “I had the same art teacher for six years. At the time I went to the school, we didn’t use ceramics. Instead we painted, sketched, welded, and woodworked.”

In a discussion with the SPA art class, Wark recalls her high school art teacher’s requirement that every art piece include the color red. “When working with ceramics, red is a very difficult color to use.” Since that time, Wark has chosen her own scheme of colors, including lime greens and gray blues, to enliven the bright scenes on her pottery.

Gesturing toward two ceramic bowls she created using an identical process, she points out the two totally different outcomes. “In ceramics, you don’t know what it will look like in the end,” says Wark. Because of the media’s unpredictability outcomes, this artist-alumnae says she prefers printmaking, water color and ceramics to more meticulous art forms. “No one expects a paper doll to look realistic, right?” she asked the class.

Fifty years later after her graduation from the Summit School, Wark’s fondness for dynamic color palette, illustration, and three-dimensional shape still communicate whimsy and happiness to the school.