Gordon Skinner (actor) performs the Contemplative Outerwear Cap, 2019
As the Reader and the Listener in Samuel Beckett's "Ohio Impromptu" (1980)

EMILY M HARRIS

Emily Harris' work involves performance, sculpture, and drawing, but mostly uses a combination of the three. In her 2017 work, Exhales Drawn in Glass, Harris gives physicality to breath through glass blown sculptures. The thin, organ-like bubbles of glass are made by, but also contain, the maker's breath, imbuing its form with the performance of its own creation. By granting corporeality to the ethereal, the work forces viewers to confront our own bodies and how we interact with the environment in unseen ways.
In the Contemplative Outerwear Cap, 2019, Harris invited a vocalist to perform donning a cap with saffron colored threads dangling under the visor. The threads simultaneously obscure the vocalist's face, which may otherwise be the focus of the performance, and reveal the physicality of the singer's breath in the form of undualting tassels. Whether it is direct or indirect, human presence is a shared feature in her work and the viewer is often an unknowing participant. The realization of one's participation in Harris' world becomes the realization of oneself in the world at large. Harris' work asks: what sort of invisible marks are humans making on the world and how does awareness change perception?

Essay by Jae Cho
A Celebration of 50 Years of Women Artists at Kenyon College
Ed. Claudia Esslinger and Marcella Hackbardt, September, 2019.


CONTEMPLATIVE OUTERWEAR & FURNISHINGS

A line of weareable forms and furnishings that change the viewer’s perception through one use or daily use.

EXHALES DRAWN IN GLASS

“More than merely pondering the currencies of breathing, When Our Breaths Run, is a rumination on the estrangements we have with our own bodies.” Excerpt from essay by Dodo Dayao, (April, 2017)

LINES WITHOUT A NET

An unexpected collaboration with artist Maneula Filiaci.

DvD: The lines seem to me almost to be the tightrope of an acrobat.
MF: Without a net.

THE|PAI|RDA|NCE|GAM|E

"The way you move affects the way you think about movement." Jonathan Burrows

A game that translates the choreographic process into a game. Inspired by Jonathan Burrows' workshop Writing Dance at Movement Research (2011).

RESONANT TRACES

A collaboration with sound artist Jonathan Zorn.

Performing a building-size site-specific score intentionally exploring the sonic characteristics of a mid-century garage-design studio.


Drawing A Living Document

"The body is a complex system intimately connected to its environment."
Milford Graves ‘Vibration’ From “XIII” The Artist’s Institute, New York, NY (2017)

Drifting thread lines, vibrating string, falling clay interrupt the flow of a public walkway and make visible physical, temporal and territorial movements and undeclared agreements.


BODY DRAWING

Line drawings that trace a continuous arm movement in ink and look to their surroundings for shape and form. Inspired by dancer Yvonne Rainer and her work performed in this same place, second floor loft in Judson Church.


SPACE STUDIES

Introducing string and the body as a material strategy for observing how spaces and social beings behave.


BIO/CV

Connect