Harrell Fletcher (born 1967 in Santa Maria, California)[1] is an American social practice and relational aesthetics artist and professor, living in Portland, Oregon.

Harrell Fletcher
Born1967 (age 56–57)
NationalityAmerican
EducationCalifornia College of Arts and Crafts,
San Francisco Art Institute
Known forrelational art, video art, performance, and sculpture
Notable workPortland, Oregon
MovementSocial practice (art)

Biography

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Harrell Fletcher was born in 1967 in Santa Maria, California and attended Santa Maria High School.[2] Fletcher received his B.F.A. in 1990 from the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) and his M.F.A. in 1994 from California College of the Arts (CCA).[3][4] At CCA, Fletcher studied under Suzanne Lacy.[citation needed] In 1995, Fletcher completed an apprenticeship at UCSC at the farm, studying ecological horticulture.[5]

In 2007, Fletcher founded the Art Social Practice Program in the School of Art Design at Portland State University, where he is still on faculty.[6][7]

Projects

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His fellow CCA student Jon Rubin, and Fletcher collaborated for several years in the Bay Area following the completion of his M.F.A., and together creating Gallery Here in nearby Oakland.[2] Gallery Here was in a vacant storefront in their Oakland neighborhood and it hosted neighborhood centered art exhibitions for a year.[2] The artists produced collaborative projects that occurred in non-traditional and municipally-managed art spaces. Fletcher became known for making projects in collaboration with strangers and non-artists.

Learning to Love You More

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With artist Miranda July, Fletcher founded the online arts project called Learning to Love You More (2002–2009). The project's website offered assignments to artists whose submissions became part of "an ever-changing series of exhibitions, screenings and radio broadcasts presented all over the world".[8] In addition to its internet presentations, Learning to Love You More has been compiled for exhibitions for the Whitney Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, and other hosts.[8][9] A book version of the project's online art was released in 2007.[9][10] The project is now part of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) Collection.[11]

People's Biennial

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From 2010–2017, Fletcher co-curated with Jens Hoffmann the People's Biennial.[12][13] The People’s Biennial explored and presented the creative activities of individuals and collectives as expressions of society’s cultural diversity that would otherwise be overlooked, neglected, or even actively repressed.[14]

King School Museum of Contemporary Art

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Starting in 2014,[citation needed] Fletcher co-founded with Portland State University (PSU) faculty Lisa Jarrett, the King School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMOCA), located within a preK-8 grade public school in northeast Portland, Oregon.[15] The museum opens to the public several times a year during art exhibition openings and special events, such as public lectures and an annual art fair.[16] KSMOCA had its first International Art Fair in 2017.[17]

Tender Feelings Press

During his residency at Marin Headlands Center for the Arts, Fletcher unpacked 33 years worth of accumulated refuse salvaged from his parents' attic, and invited anyone who stopped by his studio to take a piece of his past with them.[18] He also collected sundry stories written on scraps of paper by his friend Jess Hilliard, which he collated into the book, "Hi, Friend[19]." (Alternate title: "Remember When We Used To Make Out.[20]") So far, "Hi, Friend" is the only book published by Fletcher's Tender Feelings Press.

Awards and honors

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In 2002 he won the Creative Capital award.[21] He was a participant in the 2004 Whitney Biennial.[22] In 2005 he won the Alpert Awards in the Arts and a residency at ArtPace.[23]

In 2011, he was an artist in residence at Exploratorium,[24] and won an award from Americans for the Arts for Outstanding Public Artwork. He has been in residence at Capp Street Project at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in 2011.[25] In 2014, he was an artist in residence with his Portland-based art collective Public Doors and Windows (PDW) which includes artists Molly Sherman, and Nolan Calisch, at Institute of the Arts and Sciences (IAS) at University of California, Santa Cruz.[26]

Museum collections

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Fletcher's work is held in the following permanent collections:

  • The American War (2005), Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York[27]
  • Learning to Love You More, (2002–2009) co-created with Miranda July, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco[11]
  • This container isn't big enough (2004) art book, SAIC Digital Collections, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)[22]
  • FRAC Bretagne Fond Régional d'Art contemporain (Regional Fund for Contemporary Art), Rennes, France[3][dead link]

Notes

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  1. ^ "Harrell Fletcher". San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
  2. ^ a b c Fairchild, Britt (2005). "Breaking the Mold: Internationally renowned artist Harrell Fletcher leaps from film to sculpture to painting to photography to …". Santa Maria Times. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  3. ^ a b "Our Authors". a blade of grass. Archived from the original on 2018-11-25. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
  4. ^ "Harrell Fletcher". Video Data Bank. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
  5. ^ "Collective Museum 2016 | art.ucsc.edu". Art Department, UC Santa Cruz. 2016. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  6. ^ "Parsing a Would-Be Canon of Recent Artists' Writings". Hyperallergic. 2016-11-28. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  7. ^ Carrigan, Margaret (2017-08-30). "What Happens When Social Practice Art Meets the Market?". Artsy. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  8. ^ a b Yuri Ono (designer) (2009). "Hello". Learningtoloveyoumore.com. Miranda July; Harrell Fletcher. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  9. ^ a b KCAI (2009). "Current Perspectives lecture series, Spring 2009: Harrell Fletcher". Kcai.edu. Kansas City Art Institute. Archived from the original on 23 March 2012. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  10. ^ July, Miranda; Fletcher, Harrell (2007). Learning to Love You More. Munich; New York: Prestel. ISBN 978-3791337333. OCLC 171112007.
  11. ^ a b "Learning to Love you More, Collection Page" Archived 2015-05-11 at the Wayback Machine San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Accessed 12 October 2016
  12. ^ O’Neill-Butler, Lauren (2010). "Interviews: Harrell Fletcher". Artforum. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  13. ^ Battaglia, Andy (2017-12-07). "After Jens Hoffmann's Suspension Over Sexual Harassment Claims, Other Institutions Await His Fate". ARTnews. Retrieved 2018-11-25. Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary of Art has now suspended Hoffmann from involvement in its upcoming People's Biennial (2018)
  14. ^ Sharp, Sarah Rose (2014-12-29). "A Biennial Beyond the Art World". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  15. ^ "KSMOCA". c3:initiative. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  16. ^ Espinoza, Ambar (2018-12-17). "KSMoCA makes art come alive for students in Northeast Portland". Metro. Retrieved 2020-12-02.
  17. ^ Baer, April (2018-08-20). "Taking The Field Trip To The Classroom: King School Museum Of Contemporary Art". www.opb.org. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  18. ^ http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/fletcherdetritus.pdf [bare URL PDF]
  19. ^ "Hi Friend By Jess Hilliard". harrellfletcher.com. Retrieved 2023-03-13.
  20. ^ "Christine Burgin Gallery". www.christineburgin.com. Retrieved 2023-03-13.
  21. ^ "Harrell Fletcher: Emerging Fields, 2002" Creative Capital. Accessed 12 October 2016
  22. ^ a b "This container isn't big enough: a project for the Whitney Biennial and Socrates Sculpture Park". SAIC Digital Collections. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  23. ^ "Alpert Award in Visual Arts, 2005". Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-03-04.
  24. ^ "Harrell Fletcher 2011-2013". Exploratorium. 2013-03-20. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  25. ^ "Harrell Fletcher: Artist in Residence". CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. 2011. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  26. ^ "Collective Museum with Public Doors and Windows | Institute of the Arts and Sciences". ias.ucsc.edu. 11 February 2016. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  27. ^ "Harrell Fletcher. The American War. 2005". MoMA. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
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