ERIN HARMON: AGGREGATE OPTICS OF MAKE-A-DO

January 18 – March 6, 2019
Opening Reception: January 18, 5-7 pm
Artist Lecture: February 21, 7 pm, ACB 310

Erin Harmon's work dwells in the twilight zone between painting and sculpture. Filled with longing for places that do not actually exist, contradictions flourish with invocations of both the animated and the arrested, the joyful and the staid, the high and the low. Material and processes become sites for fantasy, illusion, and the interplay between flat and not-flat. The vibrant work in Aggregate Optics of Make-A-Do tinkers with scale to produce environments that we can project ourselves into as landscapes, even while confronting their qualities of un-nature.

Borne from Harmon's previous body of painted paper collages, her new work is influenced by techniques common to theatrical painters, a lineage of shapes and images become a trail of breadcrumbs from one idea to another. These materials are scoured, drawn, painted, cut, and recycled over time, one idea begetting another, endlessly self-generating. Whether it be through ceramic, painted muslin, or projection animation (a collaborative video in which Harmon's gouache-on-paper cut-outs have been animated by artist and musician Kyle Statham), the finished works encapsulate a romance with materials and processes.

Erin Harmon was raised in the suburbs of southern California. After graduating from San Diego State University with a BA in studio art, she earned her MFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design. She has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions around the country including at LAUNCH Gallery, Los Angeles; Field Projects, New York; the Target Gallery at the Torpedo Art Center, Alexandria, VA; the Atlanta Artists Center & Gallery, GA; and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, TN. She is a founding member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Los Angeles. She lives and works in Memphis, TN, and is Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Rhodes College, where she served James F. Ruffin Chair of Art.

Image: Erin Harmon, Proscenium Hedgerow, 2018. Latex on three cut muslin panels, dowels. 10 ft. 4 in. x 9 ft. x 2 ft. Courtesy of the artist.