May 10th, 2025 - August 16th, 2025 ​

Opening Reception: 6 PM - 9 PM, Saturday, May 10th, 2025

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Hawthorn Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening exhibition of Growth Edge, featuring the works of Portland, OR-based artist Marsha Mack.​

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"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."

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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.​