SANTA FE, NM.- The city of Roanoke, Virginia and the Public Art Commission present Recoil, a bronze sculpture by Mark Yale Harris. This life-size figurative artwork has been awarded two-years of public display and is currently being considered for acquisition into the city’s permanent collection. Recoil, will be installed on October 4th, 2008 outside the Historic Roanoke Hotel on Wells Avenue in Roanoke, Virginia. The public is invited to “Meet the Artist” and join in a discussion about his work on display. Concurrent events will be taking place during Roanoke’s Harvest Festival. Please join the artist, October 4th, from 10am to 4pm.
The Harvest Festival in the Roanoke City Market is a civic tradition in Virginia. It is being held on the Market as well as on the corner of First St. and Church. There will be children’s activities, contests, as well as live music, and the city’s public art displays!
Mark Yale Harris learned his craft from the masters of contemporary, Native American art: Bill Prokopiof (Aleut) and Doug Hyde (Nez Perce). Both are noted protégés of “the nation’s most recognized Native American artist,” sculptor Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache, 1915-1994). From his mentors, Harris learned to carve forms that “beckon human touch,” writes Jane Gibson of The Elegant Texan, due to the “endless sworl of repetitive patterns that evolve somehow into pieces of original beauty” (Gibson, The Elegant Texan, Spring 2005).
Roanoke’s selection, Recoil (photograph included), has experienced broad acclaim from art collectors and critics alike. Hence, it is currently on exhibit with the Polk Museum of Art’s “Annual Florida Outdoor Sculpture Competition” in Lakeland, Florida, concluding in February 2009. Recoil was also featured in Palm Desert, California during “El Paseo Art Walk 2008”, and appeared in “Spotlight on the Desert: Mark Yale Harris at S.R. Brennen Gallery” a television special that aired on KNBC4.
Harris has recently begun realizing his artistic vision in monumental proportions—his first larger than life work, cast in bronze, being Crush (photograph included). Crush also enjoyed immediate recognition and is now in the permanent collections of Herman Memorial Hospital in Houston, Texas; The Thompson Crossing Sculpture Park in Fort Collins, Colorado; as well as prestigious private collections.
Crush, kneels at an impressive 61 x 80 x 21 inches. Cast in bronze, it depicts two figures in rapture, arms outstretched, embracing one another, while allowing for an abundance of space to exist between them. Hollis Walker writes on Harris’s work, stating that his art, “eschews excessive details, allowing line, form and the qualities of the stone to take precedence, leaving the rest to the viewer. Nothing is more tedious than overwrought sculpture, and Harris seems to understand that less is more.” Crush epitomizes this statement.
Another of Harris’s sculptures Sacred Space can be viewed at The Village Green Sculpture Garden in Cashiers, North Carolina. This biannual exhibition will feature Harris’s work through November 2008. Also, currently on display is Georgia on My Mind at the Farmington Museum in Farmington, New Mexico, concluding July 2008. As well, Harris’s beautiful stone and bronze creations can be viewed at over nineteen galleries nationwide; the permanent collection of the state of New Mexico; the permanent collection of the Booth Western Museum of Art in Cartersville, Georgia; and several public collections across the globe!
