Haar earns Kansas artist fellowship
Monday, March 10th, 2008
Sherry Haar, associate professor of apparel and textiles, will receive a 2008 Kansas Mid-Career Artist Fellowship for her textile design work.
The award from the Kansas Arts Commission honors promising mid-career artists.
Haar’s textile designs have been widely exhibited and honored. Women’s issues, processes in textile surfaces and sustainability define her recent work and goals. Growing and dyeing with natural dyestuffs is one of her goals.
Use of dyes from her own garden plants reinforces the double messages of sustainability and the strength of women in her art, Haar said.
“Heart Nouveau,” (pictured below) featuring naturally dyed fabrics, recently received an Artist Merit Award from Mercy Regional Health Center in Manhattan for supporting awareness of heart disease for women.
Through her art, Haar tells stories about women. She grew up in a family of four generations of women, including seven sisters, who enjoyed textile art. From them she draws inspiration.
“We regularly visited my grandmothers, great aunts and great grandmothers. Even though these women were busy with running a farm, they were always working on something for enjoyment or more likely a gift…hand piecing and quilting quilts, embroidering on pillow cases, quilt blocks or tea towels, tatting doilies, or crocheting ornaments,” she said.
Haar holds two patents on therapeutic designs for children with sensory dysfunctions.
For excellence in teaching and student development, she has received the Commerce Bank Award and the Dawley-Scholer Award. Haar and her work are featured in the spring edition of the K-Stater, the university’s alumni association magazine.
Two faculty members, Elizabeth Dodd, professor of English, and Susan Jackson Rodgers, associate professor of English, are receiving Kansas Master Fellowships presented to mature artists with an exceptional quality of work, a history of recognized contributions to their art form and an extensive record of artistic achievement and professional activity.
Recipients of Kansas Arts Commission fellowships are selected by an expert panel that includes members of the commission and arts professionals.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 and is filed under Dean's Blog.