Ann Clarke - Interior Landscapes

We are pleased to welcome visiting artist Ann Clarke’s work Interior Landscapes: Dawn to the grounds. Dawn is the first textile work Ann has made for the outdoors and the first of three installations comprising her project Interior Landscapes. Natural and synthetic fibers knitted in different densities with shifting color combinations, Dawn both depicts landscape imagery and becomes part of it, as the textile panel breaths gently in the air, suspended from an old white pine located in the Secret Garden.

Interior Landscapes make expressions of interior “spaces” – states of mind. Each work is an invitation to contemplate our relationship to broader environmental issues and to ourselves. In the upcoming installments of the project, Ann will continue to materialize themes of sanctuary, interiority, nature and self, using milk paint on trees and castings of wildflower seeds.

View Interior Landscapes: Dawn in the Secret Garden and stay tuned for updates on this experimental work’s evolving interactions with sun, light, wind, and rain.

About the Artist:

Ann is a recipient of a 2024 NYSCA Individual Artist Grant.

Ann Clarke, originally from Rochester, NY, is a fiber artist who received an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She holds a BFA degree in painting and printmaking from the University of Michigan. Clarke started as a faculty member at East Tennessee University in 1994 and in 1998, she joined Syracuse University School of Art faculty in Fiber Arts/Material Studies. In 2008, she was named the Dean of Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, returned to faculty in 2016, and is retiring from teaching in May of 2024 to pursue a lifelong dream of being a full time artist.

Showing extensively across the US ,as well having done a residency with the Peaked Hill Trust Arts and Sciences Program with Cape Cod’s National Seashore, Clarke’s current work is about finding beauty in ordinary motifs that express an intense caring. She works primarily in textiles, which embody the history of the home, and domestic space acknowledging that textiles have an intimacy with our bodies and how we experience the world. Her materials are made from nature, transformed by her hands into pieces that possess a particular substance and physicality that is critical to her. These are foundational constructs on which she builds her work.