Harriet Salmon
Harriet Salmon is a practicing artist and arts professional based in the Seattle area. Salmon’s work addresses how we’ve historically reshaped nature and how it’s been viewed, manipulated, and consumed culturally. She says, “I use sculpture, installation and drawing, with natural materials using techniques from traditional New England furniture making and English willow fence panel weaving, to explore how idealized images of nature show a surface-level understanding of a much deeper, visceral relationship that we have with the natural world.”
Harriet Salmon is our featured Artist-in-Residence. You can see her work in progress in the Red Barn.
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
Explore the work of artist-in-residence Harriet Salmon as she transforms aircraft parts into art.
Salmon’s work often focuses on traditional craft techniques and how they are a form of technology (the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes).
Harriet Salmon received a BFA from California College of Arts & Crafts (2001) and an MFA from Yale University School of Art (2006). She was awarded an emerging artist fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park (2008), Pilchuck Glass School (2001, 2002, 2005), and a residency at the MacDowell Colony (2009). Past exhibitions have included The Journal Gallery, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Postmasters Gallery and Klaus von Nichtssagenden Gallery in New York and her work resides in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
In addition to an art-making practice, Salmon worked on the editorial staff of Artforum for over 50 issues of the magazine (2010-2015). Prior to that she was a fabricator for many years, specializing in mold making and casting, and went on to co-own her own company called SMArt Fabrications. Working for artists such as Kai Altoff, Matthew Day Jackson and Aaron Young, she produced large-scale sculptural installations.
From her time working in this world, Salmon went on to create and become the host/producer of Craftsmanship Podcast, an oral history project that documents the fine art fabrication community. She is also the owner of Heroes Gallery, a space that recently relocated from New York’s Lower East Side to Seattle. In collaboration with her partner Jesse Penridge, Heroes Gallery curates contemporary artists alongside artworks/artists that they consider to be their aesthetic and conceptual predecessors, tracing genealogies through time.
Salmon currently lives and works in Seattle and is on the Washington State Arts Commission (ArtsWA) Curator Roster.