Bio:
Aisha Harrison discovered clay in a community studio, while working toward a degree in Spanish at Grinnell College in Iowa. After graduating, she spent the next two years teaching third and fourth grades in Atlanta, Georgia, and exploring clay at Callenwolde Fine Arts Center in Georgia, and Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. Aisha decided to go back to school and received a BFA from Washington State University, and an MFA from University of Nebraska- Lincoln. Her work is shown nationally with recent work at Wa Na Wari, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art -WSU, Percival Plinth Project, Bainbridge Museum of Art, The Leonor R. Fuller Gallery, and in the Store Front Windows Project in downtown Olympia, WA (as a collaborator in the Black Well Red Thread Collective). She has done residencies at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Women’s Studio Workshop, and Baltimore Clayworks. She has taught at Penland School of Crafts, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, The Evergreen State College, Bykota Senior Center, Baltimore Clayworks, University of Nebraska- Lincoln, and the Lux Center for the Arts.
Artist Statement:
Aisha Harrison uses the body and sculpture as a site for exploration of the lived experiences of racism, ancestral (human and non-human) learning and connection, and the blend of histories held within her body. Her work shows reverence for real bodies (often her own) while also incorporating elements that are physical manifestations of the intangible.
Aisha has roots in Olympia, WA going back four generations. She studied abroad in Spain during high school, prompting her to be a Spanish major as an undergraduate. She loved studying Latin American literature because of the ways in which the Indigenous people used Spanish stories and images, subverting them and intertwining them with their own, to ensure that Indigenous peoples, images, and stories survived. These camouflaged acts of resistance reminded her of ways that she navigates being of African American and European American mixed heritage in predominantly European American spaces. Her work today, as both an artist and arts educator, attempts to navigate the spaces between, to create personal symbolic imagery, and to encourage others to subvert dominant narratives by telling their stories in hidden and/or overt ways.
Aisha works as a solo artist and is also a cofounder/member of the Black Well Red Thread Collective along with Shameka Gagnier and Cholee Gladney.
Materials and process
Aisha works primarily in clay, sculpting solid on a black pipe armature. She then hollows out each piece so it is fairly thin and can support itself without an armature for the firing. She is also working in a variety of other materials/processes including drawing, printmaking, carving, multi-media, and ceremony.
Influences
Aisha has been influenced by many things: nature, personal experiences, travel, literature, her parents, the Progoff Intensive Journaling method, a method of deepening awareness called Touch Drawing (developed by Deborah Koff-Chapin) as well as many artists. She is inspired by Lucia Harrison, Frida Kahlo, sculptor Kosho, pre-colonial Ife sculpture, pre-Columbian and mixed sculpture, Jacob Epstein, Mary Edmonia Lewis, Arthur Gonzalez, Adrian Piper, Yoko Ono (especially Cut Piece), Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Elizabeth Catlett, Marina Abramović, Basia Irland, Caspar David Friedrich, Robert Arneson, Tip Toland, Beth Cavener-Stichter, Rebecca Belmore, and Lovis Corinth to name a few.