Woman Giving Her Greeting
Date: 1964
Medium: Cloth on metal
Dimensions: 67 × 21 × 15 1/2 inches
Edition: 1
Related Information
Collection:
Collection of the Fresno Art Museum, Gift of Christopher and Nicholas Harris
Exhibitions:
Lanyon Gallery, Palo Alto, CA, Paul Harris, April 27–May 22, 1965
Poindexter Gallery, New York, NY, Paul Harris, December 20, 1966–January 14, 1967
Graham Gallery, New York, NY, Stuffed Expressionism and Abstract Inflationists, March 1–March 26, 1966
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, American Sculpture of the Sixties (traveling exhibition), April 28–October 29, 1967
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ, Soft Art, 1969
Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT, Fabric Sculptural Works: Paul Harris, September 1–October 28, 2001
Chronology Excerpt:
“Harris sews his first stuffed cloth figure Woman in Blue Slacks. By 1964, he will have produced three additional works, including Woman in Pink Gown (1964) and Woman Giving Her Greeting (1964). ‘Vivaciously colored, highly patterned,’ enthuses Leah Triplett. The body of work, she adds, ‘demonstrates a painterly sensibility and a command for expressing emotion through material and formal juxtapositions’ and ‘anticipates installation art of the late 1970s and 1980s in their sense of space and scale.’ The sculptures were heavily influenced by available materials. In a 2000 radio interview, he reflects that, ‘In my time . . . we were faced with new materials which looked like they were going to have great possibilities for us . . . For my part, I couldn’t afford bronze, and I don’t think I had the physical structure for working in stone. I just had to look around because of the problems of money; and when I came to Bolinas, in a house that we rented, someone had had a fire and had left clothes . . . And she left some mattresses. And so I stuffed these and made stuffed figures for quite a while that I sewed . . . It did express something that I needed to say at that point . . . and it helped me to find my subject matter.’ Nicholas Harris remembers, ‘After school I would often come to his studio on the Bolinas Lagoon, and I have similar memories of him sewing diligently for hours on end. I remember threading many of his curved needles so he could stay focused on the work. The word got out that he was making these cloth sculptures of women in chairs. Family friends donated furniture and cloth, some of which ended up in the sculptures. Our friends couldn’t believe that a man sewed so well and so much.’”