Melissa Harshman’s, Lifetime Teaching Award Exhibition, A Delicate Balance, presented by EYEDRUM Gallery will be on view March 22-April 19, 2026. A Delicate Balance will open with a reception on Sunday March 22, 3-6 PM and close with an Artist Talk on Sunday April 19, 3-6 PM. 

This current and relevant exhibition brings together recent works from Harshman’s practice in printmaking and papermaking that explore grief, loss, mindfulness, and resilience through material, color, and process. Peace Pieces, created during the 2026 Pentaculum Residency at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, was inspired by the 2300-mile, Walk for Peace led by Buddhist monks from Texas to Washington D.C. in 2026. The work references the colors of their garments, the papermaking process becoming a meditative act—an effort to remain present amid national unrest and uncertainty. 

Since her father’s death in 2021, the white chrysanthemum has become a recurring form in her work, associated with mourning rituals. The flower appears in works such as White Chrysanthemum and the Ghost Flower series as a vessel for memory, holding fragments of earlier prints and reassembling them into images grounded in the present. Other works emerge from experimentation and play, using layered cotton, abaca, and flax pulp with stencils and pigmented pulp. In response to the 2016 and 2024 elections, darker works confront grief and despair while seeking moments of quiet beauty, resilience, and hope.

Melissa Harshman received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin- Madison in 1992. She has taught at the Lamar Dodd School of Art since 1993. She was awarded a University of Georgia Senior Faculty Research Grant in 2019 titled “Explorations in Papermaking” which kickstarted her current trajectory. She was one of the inaugural Art Lab Fellowship recipients from the University of Georgia for 2022/23 focusing on papermaking wall installations.  Exhibitions include “Cut/Fold/Press” at the Craft Alliance in St. Louis, MO, “38th Annual McNeese Works on Paper” in McNeese, LA, “When Print Meets Paper” and “Sustainability in Chaos: NAHP 2023 Juried Exhibition” both at the Robert C. Williams Papermaking Museum in Atlanta, GA, “Ghost Flowers”, a solo exhibition at the University of Alabama-Huntsville in Huntsville, AL, “The New South” at Kai Lin Gallery in Atlanta, GA as well as “This Beautiful Tangle”, a two-person exhibition with Jeffrey Whittle at OCAF in Watkinsville, GA. She was on the panel titled “Considering the Environment of Print and Paper” at the Mid-America Print Council Conference in Manhattan, KS in 2024. She displayed work at the Impact 12 International Printmaking Conference in Bristol, England in September of 2022.  She completed the Denbo Fellowship at Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center in Hyattsville, MD focusing on handmade paper as well as the Fall Concentration in papermaking at Penland School of Crafts in 2023. Most recently she participated in the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts Pentaculum Residency in January of 2026. Her work can be seen at http://melissaharshman.com.