Rain Harris: Wallflowers

Aug 6th - Aug 29th, 2021

Rain Harris, a Resident Artist alum, examines overconsumption, excess and class, through color, pattern and decoration. She uses motifs from the history of decorative arts and combines incongruous elements to create work that highlights decorative eclecticism to a point of overindulgence. This allows the work to transcend itself, and find a new coherence.

"My floral work was spurred by my recent travels to Jingdezhen, China where I worked directly with the local flower makers creating white porcelain flowers. I also use techniques that are borrowed from my previous career of decorating cakes and pastries and have adopted them to work with clay.  I chose to make these pieces predominately with black clay to imbue the work with sinister beauty.   This evokes the Victorian preoccupation with morbidity and material excess that can be used to examine contemporary human notions of life and death. There is also a wink and a nod to collections such as Wunderkammers or Cabinets of Curiosities as well as the Blaschka Flowers."