Date: 1964
Medium: Cloth on wood
Dimensions: 44 x 25 x 32 inches
Edition: 1
Related Information
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
Arts Council of Philadelphia, PA, How the West Was Done, 1966
Maryland Institute of College of Art, Baltimore, MD, The Work of Visiting Artists, 1966
American Sculpture of the Sixties [traveling exhibition], Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, April 28–June 25, 1967; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA, September 25–October 29, 1967
Publications:
Brown, Theophilus. Paul Harris Sculpture. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.
Remarks:
"For a few months in 1965 my family and I were privileged to live with a sculpture by Paul Harris called The Woman in a Pink Gown. It was an experience I shall never forget. Coming down to breakfast we would find her sitting in the window in the morning light, better dressed than we, gently reminding us that we were not alone. Or arriving home late at night, when we switched on the lamp, there she would be, seeming about to speak, graceful, patient, ready to hear about our evening. With other guests we almost felt that we should turn to include her, introduce her perhaps, or ask a question which she could answer and thus find her way into the group.
"We have lived with many contemporary works of art at different times over the last twenty years, but none have been so insistent on being part of life, on changing the very meaning of our environment, as Paul's sculpture. This is a rare power today; a much more common experience is to become accustomed to-to cease to be affected by-a work when it becomes familiar."
—Phyllis Diebenkorn, “Reflections on the Work of Paul Harris,” exhibition catalogue for Paul Harris Sculpture, Certain Pieces, 1958–1980, 1981.
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.'"