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About Harry
Autobiographical Information I was born in Wichita, Kansas. I lived in Missouri, New Jersey, and North Carolina growing up. As a child I always enjoyed taking things apart and putting things together. My mother tells me that I took my pacifiers apart. On a driving trip once she bought a pacifier guaranteed to be indestructible. Five minutes down the road I had taken it apart. Maybe I already had a three-dimensional/mechanical fascination (then again, maybe the pacifier was just poorly engineered). When I got old enough to use a hammer and a saw I built countless go-carts, tree-forts, and explosive devices. Through school I enjoyed art projects, but I never took them particularly seriously. In eighth grade I got a "D" in art one quarter. In ninth grade I received an award for being the "Best Ninth Grade Artist" (same teacher). I built a kayak in my basement. It looked pretty good, but it was too short, so it rode very low in the water and sank a lot. In twelfth grade I did not take art because the teacher was too negative to the students who weren't doing well and it didn't feel good to be in her classroom. I found literature to be very powerful during my high school years and I did quite a bit of writing. Writing was really my first art form. Most of my writing was journal-writing and was intended only to help me figure out how to cope with the world, but I also wrote poetry. I was on the staff of my high school literary magazine. In twelfth grade I remember getting very involved in writing a sonnet dealing with the implications of B.F. Skinner's writings on Behaviorism (not your typical sonnet). I worked on the sonnet sporadically for months, often getting up in the middle of the night to write a new line or two. I was consumed by the challenge of expressing those particular ideas in that particular form. I was a little bit tormented by it, but ultimately I found it fulfilling to be compelled to create something. I grew up in the time when "environmentalism" became a word. I remember learning about pollution in fourth grade. By high school my concern was very deep and I felt a lot of personal responsibility for my impact on the earth. I wore used clothing, made my own shoes, avoided using cars, and more. I was rather depressed about the state of the world and felt compelled to do something about it. My vision of my life ahead involved living in the middle of nowhere, growing all of my own food, sewing my own clothes, and making my own house. I felt like I ought to become a lobbyist for Friends of the Earth or The Sierra Club and I felt guilty for knowing that I didn't want to. My notions for "saving the world" all seemed to revolve around making things. I started making musical instruments in my first year out of high school. They weren't very good, but they were probably my first attempt at making something to a professional standard. I was in and out of college for a few years. In many ways I loved being a student, but I struggled with the constant time pressure. It seemed that there was always some aspect of a course which I was fascinated by, but which I didn't have time to explore because I had to do a lot of other non-fascinating things before the deadline. I was a slow reader. My mind always seemed to wander. Quite often the distraction was a three-dimensional design problem. I designed a backpack frame with pivoting hip supports, non-slipping cross-county skis, a rowboat that could be rowed facing forward, etc. Or sometimes the reading material would suggest some scenario and my mind would start creating a story, and soon, I would find that I had been staring at the same page for five minutes adrift in a fantasy. Sometimes my eyes wandered from the pages and I would notice a pattern in the carpet or the woodwork and my eyes would begin following the pattern around the room or trying to discern different patterns within the dominant pattern. When I was really interested in the book I could read just fine. Of course everyone has their distractions, but in retrospect I wish I had paid a little more attention to my distractions and been a little less motivated by what I thought I SHOULD do. The places were one's mind wanders reveal a lot about one's passions and propensities. A couple of years into college my fascination with instrument-making (woodwinds) became a lot bigger than my fascination with being a student. I had built a treadle lathe and used the lathe to make several dozen mediocre penny whistles and recorders (and a few good ones). I decided that I wanted to become an apprentice to a recorder maker, so I found a book of woodwind instrument-makers in the library and perused it (with very little distraction) to find recorder-makers. I then traveled around visiting seven of them and one offered me a job. I moved from Bar Harbor, Maine to New York City. That move would have been absolutely inconceivable to me a few years earlier, but after living on a couple of farms in Maine, and tempering my pastoral visions with reality, I was eager to try it. For a year-and-a-half I assisted in the construction of Baroque bassoons, Renaissance recorders, and a few other woodwinds. I learned to work to a high degree of accuracy. I developed skills in shaping and fitting, machining, and silver-soldering. I thought that I might like to set-up my own workshop making recorders. I got tired of day after day of sanding and I needed a change. I moved to New Haven, Connecticut and set up a workshop there and (without a clear sense of purpose) began making slit drums. I continued making slit drums (over 700) for quite a few years as my interest in sculpture emerged. In 1983, I took a painting class at a community art center and REALLY liked it. I then took a metal sculpture class and really liked it too. In these classes I found that I had a strong inner drive to keep doing more. In the summer of 1984 I saw an ad in a local weekly paper requesting design submissions for a public art project for the train station in Stamford, Connecticut. I thought, "Well, I always look at public sculptures and think that I could do better; I guess that I should put my money where my mouth is." So I spent the next week designing and creating a couple of models. I became totally absorbed in the project and at the end of the week (though I was not awarded the commission) it was clear that creating artwork was deeply satisfying to me and I needed to make it an ongoing part of my life. In the ensuing years artwork has become a central part of my life. I have explored many different directions and numerous opportunities and honors have come my way. I hope to always continue exploring.
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