Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison
Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison (born 1932 and 1929 respectively) are among the earliest and the best known ecological artists.(Conversational Drift - Craig Adcock, Art Journal page 38.) Working with biologists, ecologists, architects, urban planners, and other artists, the Harrisons initiate collaborative dialogues to uncover ideas and solutions that support biodiversity and community development. They have had numerous international solo exhibitions, and their work is in the collections of many public institutions, including the Pompidou Center, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2013, the Harrisons became the first recipients of the Corlis Benefideo Award for Imaginative Cartography; they are professors emeriti at the University of California Santa Cruz. (Late Harvest - Nevada Museum of Art page 184, 2014 Hirmer)
Their subject matter, ranging across a large number of disciplines, always has at its core the eco-social well-being of place, context, or situation. Whether dealing with the reclamation of watersheds, reforestation, or modest projects in cities and their surrounds, whole systems thinking dominates their processes of work. They have exhibited broadly and internationally in large-scale installations using diverse media that have critical and propositional thinking in them. They use the exhibition format in several ways, often in the sense of a town meeting, always with the intention of seeing their proposals moving off the walls, landing in planning processes, and ultimately resulting in interventions in the physical environment. An explication and examples of their work are given in the Structure and Dynamics eJournal, Public Culture and Sustainable Practices: Peninsula Europe from an ecodiversity perspective, posing questions to Complexity Scientists Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison (INTERdisciplinarySCIences Complexity wiki intersci.ss.uci.edu).
The Harrisons locate their work within the conventions of both art and science. By operating in the domain of art, the Harrisons can, perhaps, more readily teach the ecological dimensions of the human condition than they could were they working in the domain of science. By doing art with ecological content, the harrisons imply that the human species should treat the planet as a sculpture. Paradoxically, Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harriison ultimately rejected the innovative installations that earn them esteem as eco-art pioneers in the 1970s. The work they abandoned is known collectively as Survival Pieces, so named because each installation in the series functioned as a productive ecosystem. Survival Pieces were exhibited in reputable galleries, commissioned by major museums, praised by i influential critics, and studied by distinguished commentators. They were also eligible for inclusion in future histories of art because they heralded art/s venture into bio-art. Living entities were claimed as art mediums, and biofunctions like waste, procreating, growing, evolving, dying, and decaying were adopted as art processes. (Linda Weintraub Strategies to Sutain Life page 74)
References
1 Conversational Drift Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison - Craig Adcock, Art Journal, Vol. 51, No. 2, Art and Ecology. (Summer, 1992)
2 Late Harvest - Nevada Museum of Art page 184, 2014 Hirmer
3 To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet, Linda Weintraub Strategies to Sutain Life page 74, 2012 UC Press
4 http://128.200.18.105/wiki/index.php/Helen_and_Newton_Harrison INTERdisciplinarySCIences Complexity wiki intersci.ss.uci.edu