Mary D Fisher

Born in Louisville, Kentucky on April 6, 1948, Mary Fisher was raised in Southeast Michigan where she attended the Cranbrook Academies, Wayne State University and the University of Michigan. Mary’s brother, sisters and mother continue to live in the Greater Detroit area; her father died in March 2005. Mary makes her home in Sedona, Arizona, with her son Zack; her son Max lives in Michigan. As an artist, Mary is best known for her work in handmade papers and fiber art, including quilts. Featured in solo and group shows in major galleries across the country, and accessible on www.maryfisher.com, her works are found in private and public collections across the U.S. and Europe. Mary’s photography and sculpture have also attracted media attention. In the fall of 1995 her one-person exhibit, “Messages,” was invited to the United States Senate for a Rotunda exhibit; the exhibition was subsequently banned on the objection of one Senator, making headlines across the United States. Several one-person exhibits under the title “ABATAKA” (a pan-African term for “community”) have toured the United States since early 2003. In spring 2006, her work was exhibited at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan; and in fall 2006, several of her sculptures were added to the permanent collection at the UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1992 Mary founded the Family AIDS Network, a national non-profit organization dedicated to heightening community, national and international awareness and compassion for the fight against HIV/AIDS. At the beginning of 2000, the Family AIDS Network was transitioned into a new organization, the Mary Fisher Clinical AIDS Research and Education (CARE) Fund at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The CARE Fund supports clinical and outcomes-based research for persons with HIV/AIDS and is the base from which Mary continues her advocacy work. As part of her commitment to enable HIV-affected women in Africa to support themselves and their families, Mary taught women in Rwanda and Zambia to hand-bead bracelets initially brought to the U.S. market by Fair Winds Trading, Inc., through partnerships with O, The Oprah Magazine, and Macy’s.com. Mary continues personally to teach HIV-positive women in Zambia to make jewelry, in a training, support and income-generation program called The ABATAKA Project. She showcases the women’s handiwork at galleries where her art is exhibited, and sells their jewelry on her Web site as The ABATAKA Collection. Through The ABATAKA Project, women acquire job skills and income that enable them to educate, feed and house their families, and even to start their own small businesses.