We Value You

2003 Gift Of Freedom Recipient

The Work of Jeannine Harkleroad

Art, Jeannine Harkleroad believes, is often more about sensing than about understanding. That’s why she fiddles with words when you ask her to explain her work. “Well,” she might say, “My art is like solving problems – some practical, some emotional, some psychological. It’s like this. It’s sculpture, but it has elements of performance. I like to think the object upstages the performance, in general, but maybe I’m skirting the issue. Or maybe…”

Finally, she gives up. “Each artist has a different logic,” she comments.

Harkleroad grew up in Chesapeake, Virginia, as the youngest of three children. Looking back, she sees the beginning of her artistic inclinations in high school, when she was chosen to attend a visual arts magnet school.

She later attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where she settled on sculpture as her discipline because it “seemed like that’s where you could really do what you wanted to do—it was kind-of the messiest department.”

Moving on, Harkleroad moved to the opposite coast to get her master’s of fine arts at University of California- Los Angeles. She also has been awarded a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Nebraska.

The $50,000 Gift of Freedom award, Harkleroad says, will “mostly just allow me to do my work.”

Beyond making her own art, she also works for other artists in their studios. Under the tenure of the grant, she hopes to spend most of her time on her own work, and maybe take some time to teach. In addition to galleries, she also plans to work on finding non-traditional venues for her work, arenas that function like drive-in theaters or traveling carnivals. Harkleroad says she is interested in the way carnivals enter and exit a town and the way spectators move through them.

“How can art move publicly, so freely? I want to know,” she comments.

The Gift of Freedom will allow her more time in the studio, increasing and expanding her sculptures, she said.

The money will make it easier and faster, but I don’t want to think it would never have happened without the grant,” she said. “That’s a dangerous mindset.”

Jeannine Harkleroad, excerpts from her Application for the Gift of Freedom

The practical things I do in pursuit of my art is to use some of my basic senses. Like most places I have been, Los Angeles gives me a lot to look at—people waiting, objects, films, status, etc. But mostly, it looks like a pinch of this culture, a dash of that belief, a tablespoon of fortune, a cup and a half of misfortune all mixed up, poured into a big traffic jam and served sunny.

I would like to make a body of work that has a destiny, outside of the gallery, incorporated into it. I do not know what this is. Carnivals have a certain way of coming in to town—populist in spirit, welcomed, creating experiences and memories and then packing up. How can art move publicly—so freely? I want to know.

I believe this grant is to allow the recipient time and space to make art. That said, I am asking myself, “How does my art benefit the community?” I believe the community could look at my work and know they are not alone on stage in this tragicomedy, that the ledge their ego is wavering on is crowded, those soft spots in the world do not make themselves, they have a neighbor in Lonelyville, I can not get any closer to an illusion than they can and this is what the space between us looks like.

If any profits arise from the freedom and work this grant would allow, I would like to pay AROHO back. It is important that this opportunity be there for the next women.

Things Remembered: Trying to Figure Out Why

My Dad has a riding lawn mower, a push mower and a grave yard for machines in the yard. The blade on the riding lawn mower does not turn but it runs. The push mower seems to be working alright. It is at least a hundred and five degrees outside. Solution: tie the push mower to the riding lawn mower to cut the grass.

Nuts, bolts, washers, springs and nails have a way of working themselves into the carpet. The vacuum cleaner is not working and my Dad refuses to even look at it. As punishment, my Mom and I take it to Sears where you have to pay for repairs. The repair person at Sears, gently and poker-faced, tells us “it is bad for the vacuum to suck up hardware.” The vacuum was not worth saving. In another punishing act, “trespassing” as my Dad would describe it, my Mom grabs my Dad’s electric leaf blower out of the garage. She begins yelling at me “grab the dog, I’m gonna blow the den.” From the dust on the top of the ceiling fan blades to the potato chips under the couch cushions to the carpet—all the debris is blown into a neat line, resting on the patio just outside of the den. The room was clean.

My work involves problem solving—some practical, some emotional.

Next to the elevator there is a sign, in red letters, telling visitors to use the stairs in case of a fire. Over time, the letters peeled away. Someone in the building has red fingernail polish that matches perfectly. This person, with an unsteady hand, filled the letters back in. I have pointed this sign out to everyone that has ever entered the building with me.

I want my work to function like this—an anonymous activity, made physical, that tells you about someone’s intention.

Shakespeare once wrote, “The spring is wound up tight, it will uncoil of itself. That is what is so convenient in a tragedy.” This quote dropped anchor in my brain long before I could even imagine how it might be relevant to my work. I am beginning to see its relevance. A carefully aligned series of events or objectives, each having their own obstacle, i.e my sculpture, have a force of their own. These objects are simply activated, their imperfections uncoil. They suffer from their own terms—the illusion of a love seat, the spark that does not catch the wood, the coffee cup that does not want to share the table with the other coffee cup—strangers in the night make strangers in the morning.

Tragedy require an event, comedy a performance—the object is the performer.

My uncle Brock always has a hustle. During winter holidays he will stop by to sell a Polaroid of our family—his family—all sitting on the couch; summertime he will sell you a boat ride that will ultimately deflate. Year round he will describe his unemployment as being “lonely at the top.” His friends work all day. I have always admired him. It appears unlikely, but I think he lives his fantasy. He determines his own objectives, executes them of his own free will. His identity is developed through his self-constructed activity. These are the terms that I want to function on as an artist.

Commerce has its place in the arts. I have returned the same jig saw to Home Depot twice. It is the best jig saw they carry. If I make my cuts and return it before the check I wrote for wood hits the bank, it’s all good. This in the only type of juggling I am capable of. I am not proud of this. I tell myself that some day I will own that saw free and clear. I feel surprised that commerce could be that irritating grain of sand in the oyster. The pearl is that I must have some faith in what I am doing.

My relationship to art is seen through the reflection on the people and objects around me. The closer these things are to me, the clearer the reflection. The distortion depends on the surface.