Carole Harris’ recent work is a dramatic first foot in the door as Hill Gallery’s airy, pristine space presents vivid and meditative pages from a deeply reflective period of physical isolation and emotional travel.
Blue Then Green is heavily layered with soaked Mulberry paper, worked in an old Korean technique called Joomchi, pressed, pulled and sutured to tiers of fabric allowing a mere glimpse of a delicate scalloped pattern or a peek of pink to show through the torn and wrinkled skin.
Embedded’s pattern is more evenly distributed in a warm to hot palette. The outer layer is stretched so thin the paper is almost transparent. Upon close inspection of any of Harris’ pieces tiny details emerge and delight. Here Harris has chosen bits of metallic thread to weave into her story.
It’s the shock of red that drew my eye to Beyond the Surface. This piece reads flatter than the others yet manages strong energy through palette. This piece feels like your soft, patched favorite pair of jeans. Flowers for Breonna is a complex piece using a charged palette of deep red bleeding through soft chartreuse green. Knotted stiches in the bottom and to the right form shapes that draw the eye to further patterns underneath. The black commands reverence while providing a visual anchor.
Abstraction is hard enough in paint. To bend fiber into an artist’s emotional story and get it to sing in a strong composition is a feat. Harris uses dangling threads or a torn bit of fabric to break out of the confines of a recognizable shape while holding her pages securely in their space. She layers fabric and paper like paint, exposing texture, color and pattern. To really get the impact of these pieces, they need to be seen in person because the brilliance is in the fastidious detail while their ability to pull at your heart strings can only happen when you look these in the eye.
All pieces are Mulberry paper, threads and fabric
Carole Harris’ Journey’s In Place is on now through June 30, 2021 at
Hill Gallery 407 W. Brown Street, Birmingham, MI
SHOWS OPEN THIS WEEKEND
Love this review and fully agree--photos do not do these pieces justice