As we enter this captivating exhibition  by Aisha Harrison, we are first confronted by a large tree branch bending over us and spiraling to the floor. The bigleaf maple branch invites you under it to get to the rest of the exhibition. But as we look more closely we see the entire branch has been fabricated from natural materials. The artist calls the work “Love Letter and Splash Portal.” Fortunately, there is a step-by-step explanation of how the maple was created in the corner of the exhibition. Collaborating with her mother, Lucia Harrison, a noted Northwest artist, they began the maple by gathering dried leaves, cutting them into pieces, and boiling them to create a pulp. Other stages of the process included making the trunk with foam and covering it with tape, then sculpting it with pipe insulation and painting it. And that’s just the trunk. The tree’s six hundred leaves are made of paper, and each has veins of red wire. The very realistic moss is dyed wool. Harrison conceived of the tree four years ago, and has been working on it with her mother and volunteers for the past two years. 

The other works in the exhibition seem protected by the bigleaf maple. Facing the front door is “Rooted.” Harrison is mixed-race, so the face is her African-American father, ancestors, herself, and her grandmother. From the shoulders two trees rise up, while from those same shoulders two braids of hair hang down to join the trees’ long root systems which in turn raise the art off the floor.

 “take You apart to build something new” gives us a young woman with branches of hair rising up from her head, and roots hanging down. In between are a pelvis and neck vertebrae. As the artist describes it: “The pelvic bone is our center and is the structure in which we grew our first nine months of life. As a mother I greatly respect the pelvic bones and their mysteries. The spinal column holds us together and has so much importance for disseminating information to all our systems.” In other words, each part of this sculpture has deeper meaning. The branches/hair reach to the sky, and down to the dark and the unknown. The young woman is metamorphosing into the earth and sky right in front of us.

The “Pelvis” really spoke to me, with its large pelvis bone carefully made of clay so we can see all the parts. Rising up from the pelvis is a forest of red “veins” made of aluminum covered with red wool. The “veins” felt like blood rising up from the pelvis, a relief for the burden that these bones carry.
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Another intriguing work is the “Boat of Hands,” a vessel formed from hands that were cast from the artist’s own family members, with moss, lichen, and sticks. Here again we get a sense of reaching beyond the object as those hands stretch out.

Harrison calls her show “Porous Body,” an evocative name that feels appropriate for these artworks. We can feel the separate artworks, rather than take them in rationally. Although their material presence is strong, all of them are imaginary and take us to a place inside and outside our bodies to nature, to the planet. Calling the works porous bodies gives space for both the idea of decay and the idea of rebirth. Harrison feels joy, not despair, in the ever-changing cycle of life and death on earth.
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Susan Noyes Platt
Susan Noyes Platt writes for local, national, and international publications and her website, www.artandpoliticsnow.com.

“Porous Body” is on view through February 22 at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, located at 550 Winslow Way E. on Bainbridge Island, Washington, and open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.biartmuseum.org.