ParkeHarrisons talk about creative collaboration — and a new ‘chapter’ — as part of Cantor faculty exhibition

Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison, Undergrowth, 2006

Calling the academic environment at Holy Cross the ideal place to try ideas and experiment, artists Shana and Robert ParkeHarrison talked about their new work. “It’s exactly what students here are encouraged to do all the time, even knowing they might fail,” Shana ParkeHarrison said.

It was standing room only in the Cantor Art Gallery on Wednesday, Oct. 3, as the artists, who have collaborated in creating art for more than 18 years, discussed their influences — from the worlds of literature, film, theatre, dance, and painting; from living in different parts of the country — and their distinctive creative process.

The ParkeHarrisons, known worldwide for their acclaimed series The Architect’s Brother, just received a prestigious grant from the Nancy Graves Foundation to support their new creative efforts in sculpture. Several of their most recent sculptures are included in Crossroads, a two-part exhibition of work by Holy Cross faculty and staff at the Cantor Art Gallery (through Oct. 27). Robert ParkeHarrison is associate professor of studio art and has been a member of the Holy Cross faculty since 1995.

(Other Holy Cross faculty whose work is featured in the exhibit include Michael Beatty, associate professor of studio art, sculpture; Michael Demers, lecturer of studio art, drawings; Leslie Schomp, lecturer of studio art, drawings and sculpture; and Tim Johnson, Cantor Art Gallery exhibitions preparator, photography and drawings.)

In the ParkeHarrisons’ new sculptures, familiar objects — candles, shirts — are turned into startling new images with the addition and manipulation of surprising materials.

Photography has long played an enormous role in the ParkeHarrison’s work. Yet they identify themselves as painters. Photography, they say, is but one element in their creative process.

“Photographic historians loved The Architect’s Brother,” said Shana ParkeHarrison, of the series in which a central character interacts with the natural environment and “found” objects in surprising, acrobatic, sometimes humorous ways. “They loved that we were using traditional techniques in printing photographic images.  But for us, the creative process begins long before we start photographing and continues long after we print images.”

Robert ParkeHarrison said that after an extensive period of conceptualizing an image (writing, sketching, meditating, and “ball tossing” ideas back and forth), the couple goes into a physical environment (a snowy field, ocean beach, wooded landscape) and actually constructs a scene incorporating elements of nature, obsolete objects and contraptions, puppetry, and more. Robert often “plays” the main character in the scene, and Shana directs (or, in the former dance student’s words, “choreographs”) his movements and photographs the scene. The resulting images are collected and collaged with other elements into the artwork.

“People ask if we’re continuing The Architect’s Brother,” they noted. “That series is a novel, and it’s finished. We see this work as a new chapter.”

The “new chapter” works exhibited at the Cantor Art Gallery include more color and are larger (up to five feet square). Ecological devastation has always been a strong concern of the ParkeHarrisons, and in the new work the impact of global warming and dysfunction in the natural world is even more visceral. While The Architect’s Brother represented a narrative and the central character was located in a complete environment; the new work is about an event that is about to or just happened, and characters have a fragmented, fleeting presence.

“It’s darker, raw, off center,” they said, acknowledging that the challenge of this new chapter in their collaboration and creative vision extends to us, as well. “The viewer must work harder.”

Related Information:

* www.parkeharrison.com * Cantor Art Gallery * Holy Cross Visual Arts department