Russ Harrison – Postcards from the Journey


I love to create and I love the schizotypal borderlands where the ideas find us. Those moments just before waking, or in the fugue of a daydream, where little epiphanies line up to taunt the sleeping butterfly who gives birth to our waking world.
I paint, sculpt, carve, drill, hammer and chide reality in attempts to materialize some of that strange brew of mostly empty space in which we swim to form a reflection, a hint, a slight whiff of the endless possibilities of Morpheus unbound. I never quite get there, fettered by the tedium of the work-a-day world fear and relative sobriety, but that is the struggle, that is what keeps me going to the next thing as I sing " …in my chains like the sea".
I have a RBA with a concentration in Commercial and Fine Art from (what is now) Shepherd University. After college, I worked in museum exhibits and created various interesting works from enamels for the National Cathedral to bigger than life elephant leg for a lawyer's office at Ringling Brothers. Working in exhibits eventually pulled me into the digital and a career in software architecture and corporate insanity that is finally circling back to the analog, hands on joy I sought when this journey started. The struggle between left and right (or upper and lower) brain is constant as my vocation and avocation duke it out.
In the end, Art, like life in general, is a journey and I often feel like the kid in the back seat saying, "Are we there yet?". I think we never really are "there yet", but I hope you will enjoy these snapshots from along that road.


P.S. It is amazing, humbling and a great joy of my life that my son, Liam, and I are traveling along this same little stretch of Art road together for this father & son show. He is an amazing guy and has started his journey well!

Show runs to July 2nd