Mary Plaster

Mary Plaster, DMin, MA, is a multi-media artist, facilitator, and presenter, residing with her family since 2000 on Spirit Mountain overlooking Duluth, Minnesota. This is her second workshop with MRCSE.

Mary has been creating and teaching across various genres and venues of studio and theater art for 30 years, earning degrees, grants, and deep experiences on this path. Her initial “cheap art magic” was knowledge gleaned while living briefly south of the border, working with creative recycling and papier-mâché experts of Guanajuato, Mexico.

Since events of 9-11 Mary has also extensively studied Earth-based wisdom (Creation Spirituality), with postmodern theologian and author Matthew Fox, and Sacred Activism with Andrew Harvey and Starhawk. 

She is a trained facilitator of the Work That Reconnects (WTR) and the Council of All Beings created by Joanna Macy.

Dr. Plaster recently completed her doctorate in ministry at Wisdom University. Her dissertation, Mary’s Millennial Masks and Metamorphoses focused on her work with giant puppets and masks in postmodern ritual and celebration.   She also recently designed eighteen masks and costume pieces for the 2010 spring performance of the Minnesota Ballet’s Carnival of the Animals using mostly recycled and natural materials.

With her Spirit Mountain Dancing Icons, Mary has focused on the folk art nature of these entities, which call for inventive reuse of discarded materials as well as a group process that encourages (gives heart to) collectives of actively engaged participants. This approach stands in sharp contrast to merely entertaining lone spectators in our television-bombarded culture! Many sets of hands have helped construct and embody her very largest creations and she assists others in brainstorming to bring their ideas to visual fruition. In parades and other ceremonies Mary volunteers the possibility of stepping into the role of a famous ancestor peacemaker or a personified energy for social justice. Her series features: Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and more abstract archetypes of the “Green Man” and “Black Madonna.”

Mary and her original 3D designs have toured to several interfaith conferences across the Midwest and California Bay Area, and to the 2007 “Green Man” Burning Man Project in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Her Gandhi entity appeared in the Twin Cities antiwar marches during the 2008 Republican National Convention.

She was a staff artist for HOBT’s 2008 MayDay Parade in S. Minneapolis entitled “A New Bridge, Infrastructure for the Future Beings,” and for the St. Paul Ordway Center for the Performing Arts' Flint Hills International Children's Festival 2008-2010 ARTmoves Parades.  Several of Mary’s giant puppet collaborations are being utilized by MRCSE Story Teller Ed Lamar’s Renewsical: A Musical about Renewable Energy.  You can learn more about her work by visiting her website at www.maryplaster.com.

Mary agreed to be a  MRCSE story teller and will help capture narratives emerging from the workshop through her art.  She is personally interested in exploring the following question with others:

In what ways large and small can we achieve the Great Turning (from Empire to Earth Community) in our lifetimes and offer a better world for our great great great grandchildren of all species?

Mary’s sources of inspiration in what often feels like troubled times are her elders:

My Elders are Matthew Fox (postmodern theologian), Joanna Macy, Starhawk, Thomas Berry, Wendell Berry and other writers who connect all the dots in the big picture and give me hope that we will make it through the Great Turning.

Mary’s work highlights the many gifts she was to offer,  when ask to reflect on she felt were her gifts of the head, heart or hand and which of these gifts would you give freely to others in the pursuit of a sustainable future she responded:

Artists are often asked to gift away their time and talents which results in an unsustainable personal lifestyle!  I do offer my friendship, moral support and some of my skills for fair trade.

Below are several images of Mary's work.