{"id":13164,"date":"2022-08-02T14:48:16","date_gmt":"2022-08-02T14:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/?p=13164"},"modified":"2022-08-02T14:48:16","modified_gmt":"2022-08-02T14:48:16","slug":"ona-the-transformative-artistic-legacy-of-michael-harris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=13164","title":{"rendered":"ONA: The Transformative Artistic Legacy of Michael Harris"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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ONA<\/h1>\r\n

The Transformative Artistic Legacy of Michael Harris<\/h2>\r\n
By D. Amari Jackson<\/pre>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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\u201cThere’s the creative process, first of all, that is always involved. It’s not just political. And in the creative process… I think you have an ethereal dialogue with your work. And this work talks back and forth to you, once you are tuned in to your own voice. And when I came back from Bahia, I was trying to do a piece. It’s called A Velha Preta. Bahia. A Velha Preta, which means the old black woman. And I tried to make that piece blue, because I was feeling Yemenja, the goddess of the sea. But the painting would not let me paint it blue. It would not work until I changed the color. And then, once I got to the right color scheme, the painting opened up. And I can’t explain it in any way that makes logical sense. But if you paint or you write music, you know what I mean. Sometimes that unlocks it… that’s a part of this process that we all go through. That’s why you can see our individual voices in our work. And we share… we share this understanding of the process, and then we focus on the part that we can talk about<\/em><\/strong>\u2026\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
\u2014Dr. Michael Harris<\/strong> on AFRICOBRA. in a 2010 interview with TV Land\/Hudson Street Productions, archive at the Smithsonian<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
Few were qualified to speak as intimately about the creative process as Michael DeHart Harris regularly did. An accomplished artist, photographer, poet, curator, and art historian, the 73-year-old Harris succumbed to cancer on July 11, leaving a remarkable legacy in his wake.<\/p>\r\n
With several master\u2019s degrees and a Ph.D. in History of Art from Yale University, Harris was one of the few African American scholars to hold terminal degrees in studio art, African American Studies, and art history. A member of the legendary artist collective, AfriCOBRA, since 1979, the Atlanta resident taught at numerous universities including Emory, Duke, Wellesley, Georgia State, Spelman, Morehouse, Dillard, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Along with the likes of David Driskell, James Porter, and Samella Lewis, Harris was honored as one of \u201c25 Who Made a Difference,\u201d a select list of curators and scholars celebrated in the fall 2001 issue of the prestigious International Review of African American Art. He published numerous award-winning books and articles on the intersections of art and race, exhibited his art throughout the world, and served on several boards including the Arts Council for the African Studies Association, the National Board of the National Conference of Artists, and the Editorial Board of the International Review of African American Art.<\/p>\r\n
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Self Portrait by Michael D. Harris<\/p><\/div>\r\n
\u201cHe was a very talented artist and art historian, and it\u2019s seldom you find an art historian that is a good artist too,\u201d points out artist Kevin Cole, a colleague, friend, and fellow AfriCOBRA member. Cole met Harris in the 1980s when both taught at Georgia State. \u201cSome of the discussions that we would get into about art, art history, and artists\u2019 work were very deep,\u201d he recalls, before acknowledging Harris\u2019s quilts, prints, and mixed media creations and how the two would swap works. \u201cI responded to a lot to his quilts and his works on paper, and I have one of his installations,\u201d reveals Cole, noting \u201cI have that because we traded.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cMichael was proficient in all of the mediums that he stuck his toes into,\u201d says Napoleon Jones-Henderson, artist, friend, and also a member of AfriCOBRA. Jones-Henderson promotes how Harris was emblematic of all the artists in their select group as each can \u201ceasily transition\u201d between mediums, given \u201cthat\u2019s the kind of collective freedom we share with each other.\u201d Upon praising Harris\u2019s prowess in their shared discipline of quilting, Jones-Henderson reiterates his late friend\u2019s proficiency in multiple forms, \u201cincluding his installation features and the use of various pieces of found or existing materials\u2014like, say, a table, a cabinet, or some other instrument\u2014along with the painting and the use of many other kinds of materials together as an ensemble to produce the final piece.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cSo Michael was an image maker, and that\u2019s what all of us are, image makers,\u201d continues Jones-Henderson, noting that \u201cwhether we are using sculptural forms or quilted forms or painting\u201d or making use of other materials, \u201cthe overarching importance is what that work is saying, and what it is that work represents.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
But first came the art of sport, given it ran in Harris\u2019 blood. His maternal grandfather, William DeHart Hubbard, won the gold medal for the long jump at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, becoming the first African American to claim gold in an individual sport. A year later, Hubbard set a world record in the long jump while also tying the world record in the 100-yard dash. And, in 1934, the all-around athlete established the Cincinnati Tigers, a professional baseball team of the Negro American League.<\/p>\r\n
Like his accomplished grandfather, Harris showed an interest in baseball. In college, he played shortstop on the baseball team at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. But unlike Hubbard, Harris\u2019s interest in athletics ultimately succumbed to his love of art.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cMy grandfather was a very prominent man,\u201d acknowledged Harris, in the 2010 interview with TV Land\/Hudson Street Productions. Characterizing him as \u201cbrilliant\u201d and \u201ca wonderful person,\u201d Harris depicted how Hubbard \u201cwould bring the cardboards that they folded his white shirts around in the laundry to me from the time I was three, and I drew on them.\u201d He noted it \u201cwas just something I did. Never thought about it. So art was always in me. It was always something that I felt comfortable doing.\u201d However, continued Harris, \u201cI just didn’t focus on it as a possibility, because when I was young, you never saw black artists. You never saw art that spoke in that way. So I knew classic art and I loved the art, but I never saw myself in it, until I got to college. And then I began to consider it as a career option.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
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Michael D. Harris, Benny Andrews, Wadsworth Jarrell
PHOTO CREDIT – Jim Alexander<\/p><\/div>\r\n
Upon graduating from Bowling Green, Harris attended Howard University where he received his MFA in Painting in 1979, the same year he became a member of AfriCOBRA. Commonly referred to as the \u201cBlack Panthers of the art world,\u201d AfriCOBRA selected its members through an invite-only process based on the quality and relevance of an artist\u2019s work. Though the group has always been serious about its promotion of a Black aesthetic, self-determination, and universal Black liberation, Harris was known to lighten the mood. \u201cMichael liked to tell jokes so, before every meeting, I would call for the joke of the day,\u201d remembers a chuckling Cole. \u201cMan, he knew tons of jokes. I mean tons<\/em> of jokes. So it was one of those fun relationships.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
What was not a joke was Harris\u2019s deep belief in the role that both art and AfriCOBRA could play in transforming its practitioners and the world around them. \u201cOne friend of mine said, \u2018art is an ultimate act of love,\u201d relayed Harris, in the 2010 interview. \u201cAnother friend has the phrase that I like, is \u2018art is a verb.\u2019 If it is radical to affirm people of African descent, then the society we live in is very sick. If that healthy attitude is radical, the society we live in has serious problems,\u201d stressed Harris, promoting that AfriCOBRA\u2019s art \u201cis not about destruction. It\u2019s about construction. It\u2019s about affirmation. It\u2019s about talking about who we are. Which is what art does. What art should do. Talk about who we are, who we can be, who we want to be.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
About the same time he joined AfriCOBRA, Harris became an artist-in-residence at Atlanta\u2019s recently established Neighborhood Arts Center. Developed in the mid-1970s from Mayor Maynard Jackson\u2019s creation of the Bureau of Cultural Affairs, the center served as a national model for how the arts could raise the profile and value of a city while supporting the participation of its traditionally marginalized groups. At the center, Harris networked and made acquaintances with the likes of Maya Angelou, Romare Bearden, Peabo Bryson, Max Roach, Samuel L. Jackson, Bill Nunn, Toni Cade Bambara, Ebon Dooley, Alice Lovelace, future mayor Shirley Franklin, and renowned photographer Jim Alexander.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cAt that time, Michael was doing some silk screening, some collages, and a lot of different types of stuff,\u201d remembers Alexander, of his fellow photographer and friend. In 2011, Harris curated the exhibit, \u201cBlack Music After 1968: The Photography of Jim Alexander,\u201d at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art and Culture in Charlotte, NC. \u201cThe Neighborhood Arts Center was the type of space that was a gathering place,\u201d says Alexander. \u201cA lot of the artists, no matter what your medium was, whether you were a visual artist, dancer, drum, or whatever, we always somehow ended up meeting in somebody\u2019s studio, in the hallway, or out on the yard. It was that type of relationship.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
Harris\u2014a musician himself, who played the alto saxophone and incorporated musical themes in his art\u2014continued his studies while teaching at several universities. In 1989, he earned another master\u2019s in African American Studies from Yale University before ultimately receiving his Ph.D. in Art History from Yale in 1996. He\u2019d spend 11 years as an associate professor of African and African-American art history at UNC Chapel Hill, also serving as the consulting curator for the Gantt Center in Charlotte.<\/p>\r\n
In 2000, Harris was a co-author of the first major textbook for African art, A History of Art in Africa<\/em>. And in 2003, Harris published, Colored Pictures<\/em>: Race and Visual Representation<\/em>, one of the first books addressing critical issues in African-American art rather than a monograph or survey. The book won two national awards, including an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. To this day, Colored Pictures<\/em> is still being used as a course text by major universities across the country.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cMichael is a substantial figure within the scholarship of African-American and African world aesthetics and thought,\u201d stresses Jones-Henderson, clarifying \u201cI say the world <\/em>because it\u2019s not just local in terms of the Western hemisphere, but international, as is the whole sense of aesthetics with AfriCOBRA. You see that even more astutely when one looks at his work. His scholarship and intellect\u2014in terms of literature, his writing, and thinking\u2014is as apparent in his visual work as it is between the two covers of his books. And when you pick up any one of his books and read them, you are having a visual and visceral experience given the augmented visual material he includes to support the writing that\u2019s in the text.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cSo his impact was multifaceted,\u201d affirms Jones-Henderson. \u201cMichael was a consummate thinker and clearly someone who was clear in his thinking and clear in his writing.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
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Michael D. Harris, Carrie Mae Weems, Edward S. Spriggs
PHOTO CREDIT – Jim Alexander<\/p><\/div>\r\n
Harris would go on to serve as Consulting Curator for African American Art at Atlanta\u2019s High Museum, as a curator of select exhibitions at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, and as an associate professor of art history at Emory University. But even with his many accomplishments and major contributions to the respective fields of African and African American art, his true impact is, perhaps, measured in simpler terms.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cHe was always interested in moving other artists along,\u201d acknowledges Alexander, citing the numerous artists Harris showcased, mentored, and put a spotlight on. He recounts how Harris was \u201cvery much involved in AfriCOBRA\u201d and its quest to empower the African-American community through art. That organization, adds Alexander, \u201cwas one of Michael\u2019s loves.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
Fortunately, we can further rely upon Harris\u2019s own words to clarify his lifelong love for art, the role it played in his remarkable life, and its ongoing impact on our world.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cArt for me, generally, is a way to articulate my experience, my social reality and experience, my larger cultural reality,\u201d explained Harris, in the 2010 interview with TV Land\/Hudson Street Productions. \u201cSo I sort of am an individual within the context of my larger associations and affiliations. And my art allows me to express that. And I got into it, hoping, at a certain point, to make a difference. You know, to make a difference in the world. To make a difference in my community. To represent people who maybe weren\u2019t represented.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cAnd so… art is a verb,\u201d Harris affirmed, with a laugh. \u201cIt works. It does things. And I think sometimes in the contemporary world, we lose sight of that… that art has always, for humans, been a means of doing something. Of making something happen. Or at least having the illusion, the sense, that you could make something happen in your world. And from my study, I know that it makes a difference. I know that it has an impact. I know it changes people. It affects people.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cThe Yoruba have a word for art: \u2018ona,\u201d continued Harris. \u201cAnd ona is about the transformation of material into a higher form, more energy, releasing more ashe<\/em>. And it also begins to, metaphorically, reflect the potential to transform the human into a higher state. A higher consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cAnd so I hope, in some way, to be a participant in that process.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
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