GROWTH EDGE
MARSHA MACK
May 10th, 2025 - August 16th, 2025
Opening Reception: 6 PM - 9 PM, Saturday, May 10th, 2025
Hawthorn Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening exhibition of Growth Edge, featuring the works of Portland, OR-based artist Marsha Mack.
"Featuring glazed ceramic and glass, introspection, overwhelm, and emotional reality underscore works in the exhibition. Dressed in a nervous smile, Growth Edge uses imagery including crying eyes, happy faces, hearts, and butterflies in a femme aesthetic that allude to an inner world of emotions and indecision. Taking its name from the popular psychology term, “growth edge” refers to the limits of one’s previous experience, knowledge, and comfort levels through which one must travel in order to mature or heal. Poised on pedestals or hanging in suspense, Growth Edge is a rumination on connection and dissonance, longing and avoidance."
Marsha Mack holds an MFA in Ceramics and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Women’s and Gender Studies from Syracuse University, as well as a BFA in Ceramics from San Francisco State University. Working primarily in ceramic and installation, Marsha’s artistic practice blurs the line between sculpture and grocery shopping. In earnest pursuit of happiness, abstract vessels in built environments serve as carriers of multivalent identities that exist in constructed versions of paradise, adorned with a visual vocabulary of personal symbols culled from a lifelong fascination with Asian supermarkets. Her ongoing interest in cultural consumption and the formation of identity serves as a wellspring for embellished objects and installations that play to the subconscious, honoring playfulness and introspection as equals.
Marsha is the Assistant Director and Head Curator of Galleries Exhibitions at the Pacific Northwest College of Art at Willamette University in Portland, OR, a ceramic instructor, and a practicing visual artist. She has presented her artwork with the Columbus Museum of Art (Columbus, OH); Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (Denver, CO); Black Cube Nomadic Museum (Englewood, CO); The Galleries of Contemporary Art (Colorado Springs, CO); and Skylab (Columbus, OH); among others. Marsha was the 2022 summer artist in residence at The Priscilla R. Tyson Cultural Arts Center, a 2023 Fall Artist in Residence at The Columbus Printed Arts Center, and a 2023-24 recipient of the Greater Columbus Art Council and Columbus Museum of Art’s Visual Arts Fellowship. She is currently an Artist in Residence with GLEAN in Portland, OR.
STAFF PERSPECTIVES
James Kramer - Summer/Fall Intern 2025
Draped, delicate forms hang from the ceiling at Hawthorn—Marsha Mack’s materials draw you into a space that feels both tense and comforting, inviting a slow exploratory navigation of the space. When I asked Mack what draws them to the recurring imagery in their work—tears, bunnies, smiley faces, bows—their responses were distinct yet deeply personal: bunnies from a beloved candy, bows from an engagement with femme aesthetics. Each motif is carefully placed throughout the installation, connecting ideas and emotions rooted in past experiences.
Various backdrops and shower curtains are arranged gracefully across the space, depicting fabricated landscapes—jungles, oceans, with visible pixels in each—that offer viewers a staged encounter with paradise. These images are not escapist so much as constructed realities, echoing the fantasy inherent in personal and cultural memory. Mack describes their collection of backdrops as sentimental, which is integral to their identity and art practice. When their intricate, handcrafted sculptures are placed against these artificial paradises, they create a compelling dialogue between the "high" and the "low" embracing the aesthetics of kitsch with intentionality.
During installation, I observed Mack’s deep trust in both the process and the materials. The interplay between ceramic and glass forms—delicately balanced on intuitively positioned pedestals, introducing a sense of tension. Mack likens their approach to the experience of exploring Asian grocery markets, where a sense of discovery and layered symbolism thrives. This act of exploration, of reading and re-reading signs and surfaces, becomes central to Growth
Edge.
In Gifts (2024), a glazed ceramic work, imagery like hearts, bows, stars, and a generously proportioned strawberry come together in a language of fantasy and ornament. The piece exemplifies Mack’s ability to create meaning through beauty, blurring lines between personal memory and cultural identity.
Growth Edge is a tender and exciting exhibition. Marsha Mack encourages us to reflect on paradise, identity, and everyday aesthetics through a field of sculptures, images, and installations.
Madison Boeder - Summer/Fall Intern 2025
Marsha Mack's installation, "Growth Edge" explores a personal threshold where fantasy, memory, and cultural distance intersect. The result is an immersive experience that feels tender and imbued with quiet yearning. The space features striking visual contrasts, including suspended glass chains, altered pedestals, and vibrant patterns set against stark white walls. This combination of textures and materials creates a soft, engaging environment that is both playful and emotionally resonant. Despite their differences, the elements of the installation come together beautifully, inviting viewers into its layered atmosphere.
At the heart of the installation are lush, dreamlike backdrops depicting jungle waterfalls, tropical scenes, and glowing floral landscapes. These images are printed on shower curtains, tapestries, and other widely available materials. Rather than dismissing them, Mack embraces these representations, reflecting her fantasies of Vietnam, her mother’s homeland, as seen through a lens of emotional distance and fascination. Though she feels disconnected from the country's language and customs, Mack imagines Vietnam as a kind of paradise—an idea shaped not by direct experience but by memory, imagination, and visual repetition.
The sculptures are the essence of the exhibition. Crafted from glazed ceramic and glass, they include characters like Bunny, a pink rabbit adorned with small charms such as strawberries, flowers, and stars—both smug and sweet in equal measure. Another standout piece, Pulling Apart, features soft blues and peach tones tied together with a vivid ribbon and scattered charms. On the back, dark blue teardrops form a subtle circle, creating a hidden emotional depth. These works encourage slow, contemplative viewing, revealing details that enhance their significance and presence.
Throughout her work, Mack navigates the tension between closeness and distance, reality and imagination. She embraces the glossy and sentimental aspects of her creations, using mass- produced aesthetics to construct a world that feels both familiar and personal. These artistic choices speak to how identity, culture, and belonging can be shaped through objects, repetition, and visual fantasy.