Welcome to Summit House Press, the private studio of visual artist Mary Mead.
Mary Mead has a long exhibition and teaching history since receiving her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, in 1989. In 2001 she became a charter member of Two Rivers Printmaking Studio in White River Jct., VT adding printmaking to a then primary focus in sculpture. At the time she said that during the long hours laboring over a single piece of sculpture, other ideas and ways to bring them to fruition occupied her head which eventually lead to an explosion into printmaking. Though she has continued to make sculpture, her more recent work in three dimensions has shown an interest in sculptural installations often in outdoor venues. Today Mead moves freely between sculpture, printmaking, and work on paper in a variety of techniques.
Mead, a Boston Printmaker, has taught both adult learners at a variety of venues in New England as well as college students at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, NH, where for eight years she was a faculty member in the Department of Art and Design. She enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge and technical expertise.
Coinciding with her exhibition at AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon, NH, (October 13- November 11, 2023) one of her prints has been included in the Boston Printmakers Biennial 2023 North American Print Biennial, long recognized at one of the most prestigious events in printmaking, at Boston University, October 10ththrough December 9, 2023. Another large scale woodcut, recently printed on Big Ink’s Big Tuna press, was purchased by the Speedball Corporation, Statesville, South Carolina.
Mead currently teaches at Two Rivers Printmaking Studio, White River Jct., VT, Chases Garage, York, ME, and Kimball-Jenkins School of Art, Concord, NH.
Below the artist with long time mentor, the artist Elizabeth (Lili) Roland Mayor.
FLOPsam, Mixed Media
Summer Silhouette, (OH Series), Woodblock Monotype, 30 x 22
Statement related to AVA Exhibition 2023
This will be my first solo exhibition in a number of years which demands a more coherent plan of action, especially given I have always worked in a variety of mediums and have a propensity to shoot off in multiple directions simultaneously. While I have tended to describe myself as a sculptor, or a printmaker, these terms seem limiting and might wrongly suggest that my drawings are of a lesser commitment.
The work in this exhibition has two themes. The first theme reflects my passion for gardening and my observation of the changing silhouettes impacted by the time of day, the evolving season and the growth of the plant itself. The second theme reflects my experience over the past ten years thinking about our oceans, our relationship to them, and the powerful experience I feel engaged with them.
I began collecting discarded fishing lines and netting seven or eight years ago attracted to the beautiful array of colors I associate with the Caribbean. Over time, other objects caught my eye entangled in seaweed or the eroded tree roots that line the coasts. Often the objects are familiar, at other times they only exist as fragments but impossible to consider them as not part of a much larger whole – the dumping ground that our vast oceans have become, or always been. The epoxy ocean fragments represent vignettes, small little chapters, in what I still believe is a resilient ocean but one worth a more respectful relationship. The redwood wave riders emerged from a desire to create a so-called Paipo board, or body board for myself, inspired by a friend who had been building and riding waves on them on the coast. The paipo, originally constructed over three hundred years ago by Polynesians who considered wave sliding or riding, a cultural ritual. Having constructed one, a series soon followed, not further inspired by Polynesian rituals but by an esthetic pull to transform fifty year old redwood boards into wave riding shapes each suggestive of a rich and intriguing history of use. The taller riders stand like sentries, guards of the ocean.
Mary Mead 