“Drawing on the long-standing relation between sculpture and the human body, my work intentionally decenters the normative, neurotypical (abled, cis-gender) body as the assumed form invoked within sculpture.”
Jesse Harrod, 2020 Pew Fellow. Photo by Ryan Collerd.
Pew Fellow Jesse Harrod, Hatch, 2019; paracord, metal, wood, found structure; 40’ x 20’ x 10’; site-specific installation; the Bowtie, Los Angeles, CA. Photo by Gina Clyne, courtesy of Clockshop.
Jesse Harrod, 2020 Pew Fellow. Photo by Ryan Collerd.
Jesse Harrod, 2020 Pew Fellow. Photo by Ryan Collerd.
Jesse Harrod, 2020 Pew Fellow. Photo by Sharon Koelblinger.
Pew Fellow Jesse Harrod, Monz 6, 2019; cotton, oil, aluminum; 20” x 10” x 4.
Jesse Harrod’s interdisciplinary visual practice encompasses sculpture, painting, stop-motion animation, and other media to reimagine forms of gendered, sexual, and disabled embodiment. Their work engages with the history of feminist art, material culture, and craft practices such as macramé, ceramics, and stained glass. Harrod says their work “aims to experiment with and explore how texture, color, and other sensual aspects of materials and forms can invoke intangible, non-visible modes of identity and experience.” Their work has been exhibited in New York at SculptureCenter and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, in Philadelphia at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery and Vox Populi, and in the traveling exhibition Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community. They are an associate professor and the program head of Fibers & Material Studies at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture. Harrod holds a BFA in textiles and painting from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and an MFA in fiber and material studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
