July 11, 2018
Mexican born artist Erika Harrsch has lived in a variety of cities internationally and currently resides and works here in New York. She recently visited Frames and Stretchers and asked us to prepare one of her works for an upcoming exhibition in Mexico City. We stretched the canvas according to her specifications on our custom interlocking stretcher bars handcrafted in the Frames and Stretchers Factory at 610 Smith Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn. It was exciting to hear the back story about this particular piece of art!
Erika Harrsch's musical score painting stretched in our studio
The painting on canvas uses an original Philip Glass score from Glass’s Metamorphosis. Five Metamorphosis pieces are on his 1989 album Solo Piano. Glass gave Harrsch five original scores from concert performances of this piece for use in her painting. Harrsch has collaborated previously with Glass having created three paintings for the CD cover design for his Songs and Poems (2008) featuring cellist Wendy Sutter.
Harrsch's signature butterfly motif
Erika Harrsch is a multidisciplinary artist who uses traditional media such as painting but also employs new media, three-dimensional objects, video and performance to articulate her concepts. Her interactive and multimedia projects have included a number of collaborations with musicians and composers besides Glass, among them cellist Jeffrey Zeigler and Paola Prestini, Claire Chase and Maya Beiser. In recent years entomology has figured prominently in her work. She uses butterflies metaphorically to illustrate her exploration into topics such as identity, the body, gender and sexuality, the space we inhabit, migration and related concepts. She has exhibited in numerous galleries, art fairs and museums including El Museo Del Barrio and the Whitney here in New York. Articles about her have appeared in a variety of publications including HuffPost, Art in America, The New York Times and Whitehot Magazine.
Erika Harrsch's cover for the Wendy Sutter, Philp Glass CD
Harrsch's talent in multiple mediums stems from a solid foundation in painting technique and we're so glad she found us and entrusted our team with stretching with this amazing work of art!
