Inorganic Accoutrements: Zachary Harris
Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art Campus
July 15 – April 20, 2020
Artist Statement
Zachary Harris, a native of Ocean Springs, Mississippi received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Mississippi State University in 2011 and a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the University of Georgia in 2018. His background includes dabbling in subjects of land conservation, environmental system design specific to parks and recreation, watershed management systems, landscape architecture, and Design Thinking.
Harris has a passion for framing his influence of nature and for the well designed. He views his sculptures as archetypes in choreographed space, projecting themselves from the ground with a
force-like entelechy, and etching themselves into the presence of the viewer. Using his affinity for tectonics, Harris invites participants and viewers to experience a familiar space in a new way and believes his objects impact the viewer by enhancing their surrounding environment.
The works are less about their title or what he was thinking and are more about projecting an opportunity for a viewer to foster an internal dialogue of which his motives become constructively and divergently separate from the artist and his vision for the viewer. It is here that Harris manipulates dense inert materials to balance with the environment, freeing them from finite definition.