STEVIE ADA KLAARK
works interdisciplinarily.
is invested in the new future economy of care.
is sensing.
is writing her first novel.
is dreaming of swimming in Eklutna Lake.
is grateful for her hands.
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A person who aims to understand how and why we are tethered to one another, Stevie Ada Klaark is an artist, writer, and professor who works with sounds, site-specific sculpture, paintings, words, the body, and video – a flux of made and altered quasi-utilitarian objects and ephemeralities - which are used to construct associative culture and immersive spaces. Klaark’s first love was the sky and then books. She spent much of her life traveling and carrying objects in her pockets. She has come to associate those experiences as encounters which result in the manifestation of personal daily rituals and she is interested in the ways that migratory objects take on the emotional, metaphysical, and psychic exchanges of a certain time and/or place.
In a larger sense, Klaark relays how we can use certain culture and gestures to walk a line amongst the comic, the absurd, and the sublime and how this can be translated to the viewer through multimodality and phenomenological experience. They think of words like transience, hostship, stewardship, quasi-spiritual, leave-no-trace, and radical openness when thinking of how collective space and land are intertwined and perceived as places of reactivation and reclamation. Her research spans from water, to silence, care practices and the economies of visual, auditory, and performance culture. Her first solo exhibition was off the coast of Northern Iceland on Hrísey at a historic shark museum called Hús Hákarla Jörundar.
Klaark holds an MFA from Cornell University, College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP) and a Post Baccalaureate from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University. Their work has been featured in C Magazine, Yale Paprika!, the Chicago Review | cover | , Bat City Review, Blue Mesa Review, Studio Visit Magazine, and on BOOOOOOOM!. Klaark has exhibited internationally at El Otro Mono, Cuernavaca, Morelos, México; Biquini Wax EPS, Ciudad de México, México; Hús Hákarla Jörundar, Hrísey, Iceland; and Milk Glass Co., Toronto, ON, Canada. She has been artist-in-residence at Norðanbál Gamli Skóli, Hrísey, Iceland; Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, IL; Vermont Studio Center, Johnson VT; Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper, NY; and Contemporary Artists Center at Woodside, Troy, NY.
They presently are a Contingent Professor at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Previously, they have been a Contingent Professor at Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) and Minneapolis College (MCTC). She has been an Instructor at Cornell University, Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP) in Ithaca, NY, and an Educator at Marwen in Chicago, IL. She has received invitations to be a Visiting Artist at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University in Boston, MA, in addition to Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, MD. Klaark is the recipient of the Midway Contemporary Art and the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts Artist Relief Fund Grant (Minneapolis, MN); the Tagvverk Torf Grant (in association with Rhizome and the New Museum, New York, NY); and the Hemera Foundation Tending Space Fellowship. She has been invited to ask questions for the BBC podcast World Book Club, has been interviewed by MPR News, and is presently writing for Walker Art Center, Mn Artists, and the Oxonian.
Klaark serves as Program Facilities Coordinator at Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, IL and is the Institutional Development Advisor and Grants Writer for Kunstverein Ludwigshafen in Ludwigshafen, Germany. She is a Mentor for the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop in Saint Paul, MN. They have been a participant in The People’s Forum - School of Art, Culture and Resistance and the Revolutionary Summer School in New York, NY. They are an Education Steward for Fireweed Community Woodshop in Minneapolis, MN. Klaark is a Board Member for the Cornell Club of Michigan (CCMI) and serves as Events Chair Officer.
She was born in White Sands Desert, NM on unceded Apache and Navajo lands in 1988 and grew up in part on Dena’ina land in Anchorage, AK. Klaark presently lives and works on unceded Peoria, Bodéwadmiakiwen (Potawatomi), Myaamia, Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo, and Očhéthi Šakówin in the Chicagoland area in Illinois; and Dakhóta and Anishinaabe lands in Michigan. Klaark is a practitioner at Zen Buddhist Temple of the Buddhist Society for Compassionate Wisdom in Ann Arbor, MI. She trains towards becoming a Buddhist Chaplain who offers support in hospitals and prisons.