When Milwaukee's Jennifer Harris met Regan Golden they were adjunct professors at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Harris a workshop instructor and lecturer in jewelry and metalsmithing in the art department. The two instructors hoped one day they could curate a joint art exhibit, which happened this summer at Walker's Point Center for the Arts in "Decorative Directive." Harris now also works at S.C. Johnson in the capacity of an industrial designer, fashioning tools for house cleaning. And in January she will become a first time mother. But across the Midwest and in the East, where she obtained her MFA from State University of New York-NewYork, Harris creates as an artist her incredible contemporary installations, which explore decoration, crafted in an old and new context, that relate to today's culture. In this current exhibition at the WPCA, Harris continues perfecting her artistic profession and role.
Q: Could you please tell us something about the piece in Decorative Directives using
the electrical cords?
A: It's ornamental wallpaper made from 4000 feet, one continuous line of electrical cord, that's connected to a singular light bulb. It's a decorative object but still functional. It's a response to the idea that we have all this cord in our life, an object we don't want to embrace. But in the exhibit it's
transformed into a decorative object.
Q: And the idea for this exhibit explores these decorative objects?
A: Yes, it's how things emerge in design, but are objects in everyday life. How we [as a culture] use ornamentation.
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Q: And you also have a plastic spoon with a sterling silver handle on it?
A: That piece speaks to the formal v.s. informal experience. Perhaps they are no rules for eating as there once was. It looks at [the rules] etiquette as a way to use objects, and how ornamentation and functional objects relate to one another.
This dual artistic statement from the WCPA exhibition provides additional insight into Jennifer's, and Regan's, artwork: "Our work focuses on the wallpaper, the tablecloth, and the lace curtain because they create liminal images....The type of femininity that demanded a decorative border between inside and out has also migrated into an in-between space in our culture....What motivates our work as artists is to expose the cultural norms that remain embedded in the familiar objects and patterns that separate food from table, wall from window, outside from inside, clean from dirty, masculine from feminine."
