Ann Clarke: Interior Landscapes

Ann Clarke is the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s eighth recipient of The Langley H. Kenzie Award, created to honor and celebrate Mrs. Kenzie’s dedication as an artist and others like her. It recognizes an outstanding artist from the biennial, juried exhibition, Art in Craft Media, by granting the recipient a solo exhibition in the following year. The award is supported by the Langley H. Kenzie Award Endowment, established by her daughters, Rachel King and Mary Kenzie in 2008. Past recipients include Bethany Krull (2010), Karen Donnellan (2012), Jesse Walp (2014), Jozef Bajus (2016), Anne Currier (2018), Ani Hoover (2020), and Taeyul Ryu (2022). The exhibition is fittingly presented in the Sylvia L. Rosen Gallery for Fine Art in Craft Media, named for the patron whose generous endowment funds the biennial exhibition and collection acquisitions. The Burchfield Penney’s staff and board are grateful for the financial support all our patrons provide to make this exhibition possible.

A celebrated fiber artist, Ann Clarke creates extraordinary works that provide compassionate messages within compelling imagery. Her newest series, Interior Landscapes, includes large-scale rugs installed on walls for museum visitors to contemplate. Dreamlike images of trees challenge us to consider the vulnerability of our wooded landscapes. Oversized, empty chairs remind us of the consequences of loss—of both people and the environment in which we make our homes. Her upward glancing Self Portrait extends her empathetic Portal Series of eye portraits of her mother changing with Alzheimer’s disease, and other people—using the polar opposite scale of 18th- and 19th-century miniature paintings of lover’s eyes safeguarded in jewelry. And her playful patches of Grass on the floor provide an optimistic element of levity. 

Clarke’s remarkable career can only be suggested by noting that since 1985 she has had 13 solo exhibitions and 147 two-person or group exhibitions throughout the United States and in Canada, England, Italy, and the Republic of Korea. Among her recent academic credentials, she is Dean Emerita and Associate Professor at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. The Burchfield Penney Art Center is pleased to honor Ann Clarke with this exhibition, made possible in part with the support of a 2024 New York State Individual Artist Creative Arts Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.