Laura Beth Harris
I’m a collector: of discarded objects, of dreams, of words. I’m interested in inversely reassembling things and ideas in a way that shows something unusual, beautiful, and new. I am a forager: I bathe in nature every time I have the chance. I notice the details. A beautiful beaver-debarked branch, a broken piece of robin’s egg blue tile, a locust wing, a burnished metal can. I am an artist: I want to reconstruct a fragmentation of experiences and histories into something quiet, meditative, zoomable, tactile, luminous.
Debris Painting: Rose-colored Portal 1
Debris Painting: Rose-colored Portal 2
Debris Painting: Rose-colored Portal 3
Debris Painting: Rose-colored Portal 4
Debris Painting: Domestic Portal 1 // I explore recreating a domestic form—a plate—from disparate broken pottery and dish shards I uncovered from a nearby creek. I’m interested in the idea that each object has a history and life cycle, but they are now broken and discarded. I want to redeem the fragments through an imperfectly beautiful assemblage.
Debris Painting #2: Things I found in Rocky Run Creek on Dec. 31, 2023 /// The last day of last year, alone, I waded in Rocky Run Creek, a dear place I go to collect myself in the free-for-all that my life as a single mom of 3 feels at times. Amongst the gorgeous rocks and shoals and ripples, I find discarded fragments of tile, pottery, wire and glass. They shouldn’t be there, but there’s something beautiful about them. I imagine the history of the items in a home, and the woman who cared for them. I wanted to create something new and rhythmic from the debris—something that I could connect to past, present and future.
Debris Painting: Domestic Portal 2
Debris Painting #4: Mirror /// I live suspended between places, literally Pennsylvania and Tennessee. On walks at either location, I’ve been foraging discarded silvery scraps: glints and bits and rocks and wrappers. There are tire-flatten sheets of tin foil, burnished lids and tubes, metal ribbons, as well as flakey mica minerals. With the fragmentation that I feel at times in this suspension, I assembled reflective shapes into an imperfect yet scintillating abstract mirror. The shards, slices, and organic elements-each with their own history of sorts-catch the light together in a collective oval array.
Debris Painting #1: Things I found in Rocky Run Creek on Dec. 31, 2023 /// With rare moments to myself as a single mom of 3, the last day of last year, I spent time boot-wading in my favorite nearby creek. It is a serene place, despite the myriad of chards of old pottery and trash I find littered here and there. I wanted to create something beautiful and bright from the mess as sort of a reflection on how the fragmentation of my life feels at times.
Debris Painting: Domestic Portal 4
Debris Painting: Domestic Portal 3
Debris Painting #3: Things I found at the end of Mother’s Day 2024
Debris Weaving, Color Study #1 (orange/blue-green) /// found plastics
Hexacomb
Debris Weaving, Color Study #2 (yellow/pink) /// mesh, straps, screen, wire softball leather
Shadow Print 1 /// photosensitive dyes, discarded objects, plant material
Shadow Print 2 /// photosensitive dyes, discarded objects, plant material
Shadow Print 3 /// photosensitive dyes, discarded objects, plant material
Shadow Print 4 /// photosensitive dyes, discarded objects, plant material
Shadow Print 5 /// photosensitive dyes, discarded objects, plant material
I had a dream where I wasn’t myself, but I was me. /// I collected the sleeping dreams of people in the downtown Jackson community. Approaching people I didn’t know, I asked folks to share a memorable dream with me. It was a terrifying process, but when folks were willing to open up to me, I felt humbled to hold space for their vulnerability and trust. There are collective threads of deep fear, faith, fields, floating and flying, what it means to feel safe, symbols of destruction, intimacy, memory, lots of water references and, well, dinosaurs. Some of the tellings are humorous, some dark and some read like poetry. I decided to type the dreams on my typewriter as a tactile act of care with what was shared with me. A visual that often causes me to pause is cast light and shadow—so ethereal, beautiful, intangible, fleeting. Over the years, I’ve taken and collected little iphone pics of these moments when I come upon them in my house. I layered the prints of light and shadow with the dream words and assembled everything together in a final piece.
Gastropoda /// cut paper + acrylic
You Can Sense a Different Spirit
Pixels
Landscapes
Timepiece Container
Fossil Series I
Fossil Series II
Point Breeze Linework Series /// 1) Lines someone scratched in the paint of my car 2) Alley weeds 3) Tangled powerlines
Designer by day in Philadelphia, PA