Q & A: Portraits of Marriage
Christi Harris
JLM; Explain the concept behind Portraits of Marriage?
CH; Portraits of Marriage is a grouping of a series that centers on marriage as a concept. The title itself refers to the many varied narratives that the pieces provide to the viewer and their imagination. I believe that the works allow others to take in the image while relating to it with their own experiences.
JLM. How much about the work is autobiographical?
All of my work is colored by my experiences, but the series that is most directly autobiographical is Fading Brides. The idea came to me in the process of divorcing my ex-husband. In this series, unknown women are portrayed as dissolving, losing themselves in marriage. Sometimes the background simply takes over the image of the bride, and sometimes the background is intended to give clues as to how being in a marriage might make the wife feel.
JLM: Comment on the bodies of work in the exhibit. How long has the topic of marriage been a focus in your work?
CH: Paper Marriage was the first series of works focusing on marriage. In this series from three years ago, I used actual receipts from my mother’s marriage to my father as the background and yarn and thread to create the imagery. The receipts span their relationship which started in 1960 and ended with their divorce in 1973. The imagery is intended to represent aspects of our home and family life, and allude to the pain and tension caused by my father’s infidelity as well what I will call job roulette. My mother had to move her family all over the country while functioning as a single parent throughout much of their marriage as he traveled, searching for his next big opportunity. The series was created for a solo exhibit in a gallery that had very large tall walls that needed large artwork.
The two framed series of collages, Miss Manners and Wedding Announcements, both use found materials as backgrounds. In both of these series, I was thinking about relationships between men and women framed by societal norms and expectations. The backgrounds are the driving force of the image, so it was important to integrate the text effectively. These are generally more playful as chance plays a big part in how they are created.
Fading Brides is a series of large-scale paintings on paper made with washes of Liquid Pencil. To me, it always seemed like the main goal for a woman is to get married and have kids. That is something I did not think to question until I decided to pursue painting as my career. Women in America usually change their last name after marrying (particularly in earlier generations) and it makes them hard to track down as an individual. I also always bristle at the idea of being “Mrs. John Doe”, for instance. What may seem proper in terms of social etiquette completely erases the female as an individual within a marriage.
JLM: Comment on your techniques. We have collages and large-scale drawings. (FYI, drawings are all 42 ¼ wide and 62” to 74” tall.)
CH: In terms of technique, my paintings and drawings are traditional as they rely on representation and description. The collages all started with a background created from found materials. I like to combine imagery along with stitching/embroidery to further emphasize the concept of domesticity present in the work. The common thread between all of my work is that my ideas are inspired by found imagery. The source of the imagery is from a particular era, one that my mother and grandmother would inhabit. I usually focus on imagery of women because that is where my experiences lie.
JLM: Comment in more detail on 2-3 of the works in the exhibit.
CH: I chose to talk about three collages from Wedding Announcments because of how they relate to one another.
Wedding Announcement (XOXOXO) is one of the first pieces from the series. When scouring my vintage magazines, I started focusing on finding 1) large images and 2) images with men and women together. In this piece, I divided the seemingly happy couple in their twin beds even further by placing large crystals and rocks between them. They are together and appear happy, but there are obstacles in the relationship that are growing and threaten to divide them permanently, yet all the while they blow kisses and hugs to each other to provide the illusion of normalcy.
In Wedding Announcement (Fertility), This couple is divided by indifference (on his part) and a mass of butterflies that are escaping from her stomach. These are intended to represent the fluttering of excitement and sexual desire as well as her desire for children. The bird is swooping down onto his half of the page to wake him up from his larval state.
In the third Wedding Announcement (Icebergs), a couple has been set adrift in a sea of icebergs. They are blissfully unaware of their situation. The man’s bed is shipwrecked at shore, wedged between icebergs. I feel that this one is more sympathetic to the male in the couple. Perhaps her behavior was “frigid” and pushed him away emotionally and physically. It would require work on both of their parts to extricate themselves from this state.
JLM; Comment in CNU and its art program
CH: CNU is a vibrant and young university. In the new Torggler Fine Arts Center, we finally have studio and lecture spaces that will match our excellence in individual mentoring in both art history and studio art. Our department is small but mighty.
JLM: What else would you want our patrons to know about your work and practice?
CH: Viewers may not have a sense of the time involved in making these artworks. While I contend that the product is more important than how long it took, there is also a labor to the art that may be invisible. For collages, finding the right materials takes a lot of time. Scouring antique malls, the Internet, thrift stores, yard sales and book sales are all important. After I find interesting and unique materials I must develop a specialized concept for those materials, for instance, the Wedding Announcement series. I found these in Massachusetts in one antique mall in two separate booths. One batch, ranging in date from the late 1800’s to the 1940’s, was bundled with a large package of letters. I could not open the bag to see what was inside, so I took a chance. The other set of announcements were from the 1920’s to the 1960’s in a wedding announcement scrapbook. Without the wedding announcements themselves (which still exist after all of these years, possibly long after the people and/or marriages) these images would not exist.
My recent drawings and paintings rely on found photographs. Once I have an idea, I spend a lot of time searching for the right images online. I like that the identity of the women is anonymous. It allows one to project our own narratives onto the image.