BIOGRAPHY

Heather ‘Bird’ Harris is an artist and history educator based in Atlanta, Georgia. Through painting and social practice, she engages site-specific materials to explore place and memory, the throughlines between history and environmental crises, and mothering in the face of climate change.

Harris received her B.A. in art history from Skidmore College and master’s degree in education leadership from Columbia University. Harris has served as principal of a turnaround school in New Orleans and continues to consult with school leaders across the South to implement anti-racist history education. Her art practice has been featured nationally on NPR, Sea Change, and The All We Can Save Project. Recent exhibitions include the New Mexico State University Museum, Art Fields, Stoveworks, her solo exhibition Where the Water Goes as part of her Arts New Orleans Residency, and The Land Memory Project in collaboration with Science Gallery Atlanta. She was recently announced as one of 7 artists selected for the Art & Social Justice Fellowship at Emory University. Harris is an MFA candidate at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I believe the earth has a long memory and that we, often intentionally, do not. I view my roles as an artist, mother, historian, and citizen as deeply intertwined and linked to the same core responsibilities: interrogate imbalances, reckon with hard histories, create beauty, and work towards a future of natural equilibrium. Having recently moved my family from our home in New Orleans, one of the fastest disappearing land masses in the world, my work is a meditation on land loss, the multiple histories of American land, and mothering in the face of ecological collapse. My painting practice is largely personal, meditative, and an exploratory foundation for my social practice. I make paint and ink from handfuls of site-specific natural pigments that I mix with washes of water that allow me to study the interaction between land, water, and color on a smaller, digestible scale. I find comfort in making geologic shifts (and my fears for my children’s futures) bite-sized, observable, and even beautiful.

The World Will Go On Beautifully When We're Gone

2023
22” x 30”
Clay from the artist's backyard, safflower, cherry, and turmeric inks, water and sun on Saunders 640 gsm with deckled edge

$1,000