Speaker: Mary Plaster
Mary Plaster, D.Min. 2010 Candidate at Wisdom University in San Francisco, is a local artist who has recently focused her work in masks and giant puppets in celebration, activism, and ritual. She is the artistic director of All Souls Night at the Duluth Depot, a November community festival in the spirit of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).
Mary is currently completing 18 commissioned masks for the Minnesota Ballet's March production of Carnival of the Animals. She is also participating in her third year as a parade artist with the Ordway Theatre ARTmoves Parade with St. Paul inner city youth for the Flint Hills International Children's Festival.
Mary has studied with several notable teachers in eco-arts and spirituality, including postmodern theologian Matthew Fox, Joanna Macy, Starhawk, and Andrew Harvey. She began backstage artwork as an intern at the renowned Minneapolis Children's Theatre Company & School in 1980. Her primary mask/movement studies were at Chabot Conservatory in 1982/83 near San Francisco, CA and with El Estudio Busqueda de Pantomima-Teatro, Guanajuato, Mexico from 1984 to 1987.
Mary completed a BFA (Studio Arts) and a BA (Theatre Design), from the U of MN, Twin Cities Campus in 1990 and then worked in the TC area with several theatres in costumes and scenic painting, finishing her MA in Studio Arts at University of WI, Superior after moving to Duluth with her family in the summer of 2000. She was very active with the local Art of Peace community after the events of 9-11.
Mary's Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and Green Man larger-than-life street puppets have appeared all over the Midwest and she was invited to the 2007 Burning Man festival in Nevada. She was parade artist for 2008's Minneapolis MayDay with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre (HoBT).
Mary received a 2008 McKnight/ ARAC career development grant to summer apprentice with the famous Bread & Puppet Theatre of Vermont. She was then guest curator at the Duluth Art Institute in fall, coordinating a giant puppet art exhibit, Effigies of Peace & Protest, which featured works from HoBT, Bread and Puppet, and local pieces.
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