ART ED PAR-TEE @Intuit Gallery

The Art Ed Welcome Event was held on Saturday September 14th @Intuit Gallery. This net- working event for SAIC MAAE candidates featured delicious food from Wishbone to satisfy all taste buds. The eclectic atmosphere was casual, friendly and filled with the fine art of Eddie Harris. The purpose of this networking event was effortlessly achieved and it provided first year grad students an opportunity to learn know more about the wonderful folks in our department and our classmates. 

It Takes a Hard Heart: The Life Work of Eddie Harris

September 13 - December 28, 2013

Free opening reception: September 13, 5-8pm

Curated by Laura Bickford 

Eddie Harris in his garden. Photo by Cheri Eisenberg

After living and working in and around Chicago’s Auburn-Gresham neighborhood for nearly fifty years, the powerful and politically-tuned work of the artist Eddie Harris will be exhibited to the public for the first time at Intuit. This exhibition will explore both the breadth and depth of Harris’ work, in media and subject matter, touching on themes including Black power, portrayals of beauty and strength, the family, and the aesthetics of activism in the form of his bas-relief sculptures, paintings and drawings, and carved and painted objects.

Largely self-taught, Harris draws from memories of picking cotton during a childhood in Arkansas to his experience with the years of rage and the Black Panthers in Chicago, using found and salvaged materials to tell his personal narrative of the very public struggle for Black empowerment. Formally strong, with a painstaking attention to craftsmanship and gesture, his entire artistic practice shows a long dedication to both the aesthetic and cultural concerns of his life across several decades and presents a private and public address of Black power and heart.

Drawing from an uncatalogued body of work that numbers in the hundreds of pieces, this exhibition, with its selection of thirty-two works, presents a glimpse into the life and work of Harris. Speaking about his ability to carve notoriously-unwieldy pine, Harris has said, “The wood’s got to have a hard heart. You can tell if it does, and if that pine has a hard heart, using the tools I made, you can carve it.”  Following the wisdom of Harris, the exhibition highlights not only the fragility and strength, but also the empathy, anger, and inventiveness displayed by Harris to tirelessly transform his life experiences into monumental works of art.


Established in 1991, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art (Intuit) is the only nonprofit organization in the United States that is dedicated solely to presenting self-taught and outsider art — with world class exhibitions; resources for scholars and students; a Permanent Collection with holdings of more than 1,100 works of art; the Henry Darger Room Collection; the Robert A. Roth Study Center, a non-circulating collection with a primary focus in the fields of outsider and contemporary self-taught art; and educational programming for people of all interest levels and backgrounds.

Article courtesy of Intuit Gallery and photographs by Tony Smith.