I was asked by Scott Robertson from Fifthsyllable to write a “manifesto” for a book of artist manifestos that they will be publishing. Here is what I came up with:   I recall thinking as a young art student that I would never personally experience an art movement...

Hallie Ford Fellows in the Visual Arts 2017–19Jordan Schnitzer Museum of ArtUniversity of OregonEugene, OregonOctober 3, 2020 to January 10, 2021 Building Community: PSU Art + Design Faculty, Past + PresentJordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State...

Nashville, TN James Robertson PKWY N/S @ Nissan Stadium, Facing East October - November 2018 I was invited to design a billboard for the For Freedoms project: www.forfreedoms.org After hearing about Rudi Giulani’s comment...

Contemporary Art Gallery Lord Strathcona Elementary School Vancouver, BC 2017 -2018 Over the course of the 2017-18 school year A New Path to the Waterfall was a collaborative art project that situated a CAG satellite gallery space within MaryAnn Persoon’s...

In 1995 I came across a seed catalog (The 1995 Ethnobotanical Catalog of Seeds, by J.L Hudson, Seedsman). It had some amazing seed listings and articles (one in particular that I was really interested in challenged the concept of “native plants”) and also included a...

Martin Luther King Jr. School 4906 NE 6th Ave.  Portland, OR 2014-ongoing KSMoCA (King School Museum of Contemporary Art) is a contemporary art museum within the walls of a functioning preK-8 public school in NE Portland, OR. It is a collaborative project with...

DisjectaPortland, OR March 13 - April 24, 2016 Exhibition organized with Emma Colburn, Roz Crews, Amanda Leigh Evans, Emily Fitzgerald, Lauren Moran, Anke Schüttler, Renee Sills, and Kimberly Sutherland With Zahra Ahmed, De La Salle North Catholic High School Choir,...

Public Doors and Windows   UCSC Institute of the Arts & Sciences  Santa Cruz, California 2015 I worked with Molly Sherman and Nolan Calisch as part of our collaboration Public Doors and Windows on a project for The Institute of the Arts and Sciences (IAS) at UCSC....

National Endowment for the Arts Artworks Podcast 2016 I was interviewed by Josephine Reed at the NEA Read the transcript here.  

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Open Studio 2015 I was asked to created an assignment for Mark Bradford’s Open Studio project at SFMoMA: https://www.sfmoma.org/read/open-studio-harrell-fletcher/  

Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit 2014-2015 I co-curated the second version of the People’s Biennial with Jens Hoffmann in Detroit. We came up with a system of asking established artists from around the country to each select someone that they thought was doing...

Public Doors and Windows  FLEX IT! My Body My Temple Parthenon Museum Nashville, TN 2014   Highlander Folk School was an adult education center founded in 1932 that brought together many labor and civil rights activists including Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King...

Public Doors and Windows Flex It! My Body My Temple Parthenon Museum Nashville, TN 2014 One Mile Loop was a series of public signs and musical performances that I created with Molly Sherman and Nolan Calisch which responded to the routine exercise habits of runners...

Public Doors and Windows  Shine A Light  Portland Art Museum Portland, OR 2014 Molly Sherman, Nolan Calisch and I (as part of our collaboration Public Doors and Windows) organized a distributed “book fair” that took place in various locations inside of the...

On Foot: An Educational Art and Social Practice Journey from Portland to Mt. Hood Portland State University Portland, Oregon 2014 This project was constructed as a summer course with Eric Steen to examine various aspects of Oregon’s regional natural history,...

Public Doors and Windows Matisse Museum Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France 2014   To a Lifetime of Meaningful Encounters (La vie est faite de belles rencontres) was a project I did with Molly Sherman and Nolan Calisch as part of our collaboration Public Doors &...

Amherst College Amherst, MA 2013 Wendy Ewald asked me to work with her and a freshman seminar class she was teaching with Martha Saxton. The class was intended to address issues related to sexual assault on the Amherst campus. It was a daunting challenge. The more I...

“Moment to Moment” Artist Project SeriesThe Thing Quarterly x Levi’s Made & Crafted Los Angeles, CA and Tokyo, Japan 2013 "Hello There Friend" is an ongoing series of works in which I go for a walk in an unfamiliar place with someone. On this walk, my companions...

I was asked by Cue  to write a text for a catalog on the work of Carmen Papalia.   The Catalog can be viewed online and below is my text.   Essay for Carmen Papalia: Long Time No See Catalog Cue Foundation, NYC 2013 A year or so ago I was...

The Exploratorium San Francisco, CA 2013 As an Exploratorium Artist-in-Residence I created a project that involved traveling for four days with a group of participants from the end of the museum's building across the Bay in a sail boat and then walking from Emeryville...

Project for The Past is Present Curated by Jens Hoffmann Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit Collaboration with Katherine Ball 2013 Katherine Ball and I collaborated on a project in Detroit, this is what she wrote about it: One of the reasons that Harrell and I chose...

 How Do You Mean?: Culture in Translation Symposium Portland Institute for Contemporary Art 2013 In this special matinee performance of Niicugni, I intermittently “pressed pause” on performer Emily Johnson, adding thoughts and questions about the artist and her work...

Learning for Life  Henie Onstad Art Centre, Oslo, Norway Collaboration with Ella Aandal 2012 For this project which was commissioned by the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo for a show called Learning for Life, I asked that a local child or adolescent lead me on an...

Project for the 2012 Shanghai Biennial Shanghai, China 2012 Jens Hoffmann invited me to be a part of the 9th Annual Shanghai Biennial. During a site visit to Shanghai this summer I was given a tour of the building that was being remodeled into the museum for the...

Exhibition for Crisp-Ellert Art Museum St. Augustin, FL. 2012 St. Augustine, Florida is the oldest continuously occupied european settlement in the US. A great deal of focus has been placed on its Spanish colonial development and its more recent resort hotel history,...

Project for the Tate Live Series Tate Modern, London, UK 2012 Okay, so a couple of curators, Catherine Wood and Kathy Noble, from the Tate Modern in London sent me an email asking if I’d like to take part in a new online performance series that they are organizing. I...

Project for Wide Open School Hayward Gallery, London 2012 The class/project focused on Art and Social Practice, a term used to describe site-specific, participatory, interdisciplinary, and publicly accessible art projects and practices. I explained and addressed a...

Project for Grinnell College Grinnell, IA. 2012 When asked to go to an unfamiliar place to do a lecture and workshop I often ask local people in that place to organize a walking tour where a set of people each select a location and person at that location to discuss...

Curated for the Museum of Craft and Folk Art San Francisco, CA 2012 Exhibition that I curated about the intersection between art and farming. The project included a commissioned public project by John Cerney who makes large scale cut out paintings that are displayed...

Project for Laura Gitlen Gallery, New York City.  Also exhibited at James Cohan Gallery, New York City. 2012 “Now this shows you the roofless motif which I think is very, very handsome. . . .This is really the old hotel and you can see that instead of just tearing it...

Project for UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art Colorado Springs, CO Collaboration with Eric Steen 2012 Three day walk from the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs to the top of Pikes Peak organized with Eric Steen that included students, faculty, and community...

Project for the The 10th Northwest Biennial Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma WA 2012 I gave the Tacoma Art Museum the following assignment to work with local organizations and environmental groups to create a collaborative project: Locate a local environmental organization...

Project for The Hammer Museum Los Angeles, CA Collaboration with Adam Moser 2012 The Hammer Yearbook investigates the inner workings of a museum including the visitors that come through it, the artists that provide the motivation to come in the first place, and the...

Project for Dumbo Feather  2011 A magazine in Australia called Dumbo Feather asked me to do the back covers for their magazine. They are a quarterly, so I did four of them. At the time and still now I go to a park near my house with my daughter and our dogs on a...

Film Presented by Gareth Moore as part of his Children's Films project November 19, 2011 – January 29, 2012 For his project "Children’s Films" Gareth Moore asked five international artists to produce short films for children. The artists invited, Ulla von Brandenburg...

Saraga Market  Indianapolis, IN 2010 I was asked by a non-profit art center in Indianapolis, Indiana called Big Car to come up with a project that would happen in conjunction with a city-wide festival which was focusing on food systems. The director of Big Car, Jim...

A Project for Portland State University  Portland, OR 2010 Funded in part by the Regional Arts and Cultural Council This was a percent for art public art project located on a large blank wall at the corner of SW 5th and Hall on the Portland State University campus. I...

Curated as part of The Magnificent Seven  CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art San Francisco, CA. 2010 Curated by Harrell Fletcher as part of The Magnificent Seven, this unique, biographical exhibition featured artworks by the artist's mentor, family member and...

Curated with Jens Hoffmann Supported by Independent Curators International 2010 People’s Biennial is an exhibition that examines the work of artists who operate outside the sanctioned mainstream art world. As such it recognizes a wide array of artistic expression...

Project for the National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne, Australia 2010 More information coming soon.

Curated for PDX Contemporary Art  Portland, OR 2009 In these times of economic desperation, (or even just during the desperation of everyday life in general) it is understandable that people would find escape routes into alternate realities. For some people that is as...

Project for Art Gallery of Mississauga Mississauga, Canada, 2009 and IDEA Space at Colorado College Colorado Springs, CO, 2010 Collaboration with Wendy Red Star In 2007 a living room rug was purchased as a gift from a US home wares company for my house. It was ordered...

Play written and performed for Assume Nothing: New Social Practice The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria Victoria, British Columbia 2009 Script by J.D. Nasaw From interviews conducted by Harrell Fletcher and J.D. Nasaw   https://vimeo.com/122347624   PDF of...

Exhibition at The Power Plant Toronto, Ontario, Canada Curated by Senior Curator of Programs, Helena Reckitt 20 September–2 November, 2008 A ten day project (and six week show) with an event series, involving an out of town artist, and various local people, translated...

Sala Diaz San Antonio, TX  Made in collaboration with Veda Epling 2006 In 2005 I was in San Antonio doing an Art Pace residency. I spent a lot of time just walking around, often times with Katrina Moorhead who was also doing a residency. At some point while on one of...

Video for Domaine De Kerguehennec Brittany, France 2006 I was asked to do a residency at an art center in Brittany, France called Domaine De Kerguehennec that is located on an old estate in the country. I spent about a month every Summer there for about three years....

Published in ARTL!ES Winter 2006 When I was in grad school, I TA’ed a class for a professor I liked a lot. He and I came up with various projects and field trips for the students. It was a fun class and, for the most part, it went really well, but there was one...

Video of people's scars with the stories of how they got them 2003