Shirly Stark, born in New York City in 1927, was an African American artist, an art professor who specialized in sculpture, and a poet. Stark moved to Detroit, Michigan, with her second husband where she discovered her love of sculpting and began...
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Shirly Stark, born in New York City in 1927, was an African American artist, an art professor who specialized in sculpture, and a poet. Stark moved to Detroit, Michigan, with her second husband where she discovered her love of sculpting and began studying art at Wayne State University. Only five years later, Stark left her job at the Internal Revenue Service to study art in Italy. When Stark returned from Europe, she received a grant for a residency at MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and a work-study grant from the Wurlitzer Foundation in New Mexico to continue her work as an artist. In 1972, Stark's experience with carving basalt helped her become assistant to Dimitri Hadzi, internationally renowned sculptor, while he worked on a project in Eugene, Oregon. Stark was later appointed as the first female Mellon Chair in Sculpture at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1975. She died in Denver, Colorado, in 2006. The Shirley Stark Papers contain very little biographical information and no documentation of her work as an artist. It contains a small amount of letters (1996-2001), poetry (1996-2006), drafts, and a publication. Most of the letters are written by Stark to poet Gale Jackson. The poems include a selection of Stark's completed works and drafts; some were written in Taos, New Mexico during a 1998 Wurlitzer writing fellowship.
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