BIO + CV
Artist Residency at Tides Institute and Museum of Art, Eastport ME, September 2020. Photo by Star Black.
Julie Harrison is a visual artist based in the Hudson Valley and New York City who has moved between drawing, photography, video, painting, and performance.
SHORT ARTIST BIO
Julie Harrison is a multidisciplinary visual artist who probes science and technology to explore the dualities of nature and artifice. Her experimental process-driven work has garnered numerous awards, and she has exhibited widely. Two books by Harrison were published by Granary Books and one with The New Press, and her work has been placed in special collections at The Getty, Library of Congress, Harvard University, Columbia University, Yale University, Brown University, and others. For eighteen years, Harrison was a professor of art at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken NJ, where she founded the Art & Technology B.A. program.
LONG ARTIST BIO
Julie Harrison (born 1952 in Baltimore Maryland) is a multidisciplinary visual artist based New York City and the Hudson Valley. Her work engages with science and technology to explore the dualities of nature and artifice.
Her experimental process-driven work has received numerous awards, including support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Creative Artists Public Service Award, Funding Exchange / Paul Robeson Fund, and the Film Fund. She has also received the Barbara Latham Memorial Award, First Prize from both the Colorado Video Award (Athens Film and Video Festival) and the National Educational Film & Video Festival (Gold Apple), and an Honorable Mention from the Atlanta Film and Video Festival.
Harrison has exhibited widely, both locally and internationally. Solo shows include exhibitions at the Southern Vermont Arts Center, Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, Crescent Tree Gallery (Claremont CA), Wekalet Behna (Alexandria Egypt), and Thundergulch (NYC). Her work also appeared in group exhibitions at major institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Museum of Arts & Design (NYC), The New Museum (NYC), the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Neuberger Museum of Art, Albany State Museum, Smith College Museum of Art, the Museum of the Moving Image (NYC), and the Walker Art Center. Internationally, her work has been shown at the Staatliche Museum (Baden-Baden), Münchner Stadtmuseum (Munich), and Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Frankfurt).
Her work has been documented in catalogues and reviewed in publications such as Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Journal of Artists Books, Directions, Library Journal, Booklist, The Village Voice, SoHo Weekly News, The Independent, The Toronto Globe & Mail, and The Albuquerque Tribune. She has published two books with Granary Books and one with The New Press. Her work is also included in publications and media such as A Book About Colab (And Related Activities), M/E/A/N/I/N/G: A Journal of Contemporary Art Issues, ETC: The Experimental Television Center 1969–2009 (DVD), Shark: A Journal of Poetics and Art Writing, and Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine.
Harrison has participated in artist residencies at Nordisk Kunstnarsenter Dale (Norway), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Tides Institute & Museum of Art, The Residency Project, Visual Studies Workshop, Experimental Television Center, Central Michigan University, and Satellite Exchange Society (Vancouver). Her work is held in special collections at The Getty, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library/Berg Collection, and the university libraries of Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Brown, and others.
For eighteen years, Harrison was a professor of art at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ — a traditional engineering school — where she founded the Art & Technology B.A. program. Her early work and materials from her involvement in Collaborative Projects (Colab), the influential downtown artists’ group of the late 1970s and ’80s, are archived at the New York Public Library.
CAREER NARRATIVE
Julie Harrison was a pioneer user of the early Sony Portapak analog video system, creating her first video/performance in 1974 while attending the University of New Mexico. Her early time-based works traversed through private performances for video to single- and multiple-video camera/monitor performances and installations. Having performed and toured with New Mexico Danceworks from 1974–1976, she moved to New York City in 1976 and continued to work with dancers, most notably with Simone Forti (1978) which culminated in a performance of Forti’s “Huddle” at the MoMA Sculpture Garden, and Grommet events spearheaded by Fluxus artist Jean Dupuy.
From 1977–1984, Harrison was an early member of the influential artists’ group Collaborative Projects (Colab). She later co-founded Machine Language (1984–1986), a video art collective formed with Willoughby Sharp, Susan Brittan and Wolfgang Staehle. Over a span of 15 years, she worked on-and-off with image-processed video at the Experimental Television Center (ETC), and produced and directed video art, documentaries and art educational programing. Her video works aired nationally on PBS and were featured in major festivals including the Toronto Film Festival, World-Wide Video Festival (The Hague), and Video Roma (Italy), among others.
In the 1980s, Harrison also made paintings and drawings. In 1993, she purchased her first MacIntosh computer to convert video stills into digital images, merging her time-based and two-dimensional practices. She spent the next two decades working primarily in 2-D digital media. After making conceptual photographs throughout the 2000s, she began her ongoing series of biomorphic and microbial drawings in 2017.
Her work has been exhibited widely, including in group shows at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), the New Museum (NYC), Bronx Museum of the Arts, Neuberger Museum, Albany State Museum, Smith College Museum of Art, Museum of the Moving Image (NYC), Clark Humanities Museum, and The Walker Art Center. In Germany, her work has been shown at the Staatliche Museum (Baden-Baden), Münchner Stadtmuseum (Munich), and the Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Frankfurt).
She has received numerous awards, including two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as support from the New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Creative Artists Public Service Award (CAPS), Funding Exchange / Paul Robeson Fund, The Film Fund, and the Barbara Latham Memorial Award. Her video work has been recognized with First Prize / Colorado Video Award at the Athens Film and Video Festival, First Prize/Gold Apple at the National Educational Film & Video Festival, and an Honorable Mention from the Atlanta Film and Video Festival.
Harrison’s books and videos are held in public and private collections across the U.S. and internationally, including The Getty, Library of Congress, New York Public Library/Berg Collection, and at institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, USC, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, University of Iowa, University of Delaware, Scripps College, SUNY Binghamton, and Central Michigan University. International holdings include the Staatliche Kunsthalle (Germany), Stichting Kijkhuis (Netherlands), Video Inn (Vancouver), and the Metropolitan Toronto Library.
Her work is distributed by Granary Books (New York), Women Make Movies (New York), and Video Out (Vancouver Canada). The archive of her early works and participation in Collaborative Projects (Colab) is held at the New York Public Library.