Sonya Clark is an American artist and chair of the Craft/Material Studies Department at Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University is a public university located in Richmond, Virginia. It comprises two campuses in the Downtown Richmond area, the product of a merger between the Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia in 1968...

  in Richmond, VA. Previously, she was Baldwin-Bascom Professor of Creative Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

University of Wisconsin–Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

. Clark received degrees from Amherst College

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Cranbrook Academy of Art. She graduated from the Sidwell Friends School

Sidwell Friends School

Sidwell Friends School is a Quaker private school located in Bethesda, Maryland and Washington, D.C., offering pre-kindergarten through secondary school classes. Founded in 1883 by Thomas Sidwell, its motto is "Eluceat omnibus lux" , alluding to the Quaker concept of inner light...

 in 1985. She is known for expanding the definition of fiber art

Fiber art

Fiber art is a style of fine art which uses textiles such as fabric, yarn, and natural and synthetic fibers. It focuses on the materials and on the manual labour involved as part of its significance.-Fiber:...

 by exploring the use of combs and imagery of hair references and hairstyles in her work. She has exhibited artwork at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, NY and the Walters Art Museum

Walters Art Museum

The Walters Art Museum, located in Baltimore, Maryland's Mount Vernon neighborhood, is a public art museum founded in 1934. The museum's collection was amassed substantially by two men, William Thompson Walters , who began serious collecting when he moved to Paris at the outbreak of the American...

 in Baltimore

Baltimore

Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...

, MD among many other venues. Her Beaded Prayers Project has been exhibited in multiple venues including the Newark Museum

Newark Museum

The Newark Museum is the largest museum in New Jersey, USA. It holds fine collections of American art, decorative arts, contemporary art, and arts of Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the ancient world...

 and the Queens Library in Jamaica, NY. She has taught at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on several occasions and served on the Board from 2000 to 2009. Clark is a recipient of many awards including a Pollock Krasner Award in 2006.

Published works

• Haystack Monograph Series #17, 2004: Craft and Design. “Hand-me-downs: Our Stories held in Objects, Materials and Processes.”
• Surface Design, Fall 2003. “In Review: Nick Sargent.”
• Surface Design, Summer 2000. “Beneath Pattern: Investigating Symmetry.”
• Ornament, Spring 1997. “Sculptural Headdresses.”

External links

• Hair art
• Beaded Prayers Project