Marshall Harris
Well, that’s something you don’t see every day!
With an investigative eye, Mr. Harris creates life-sized (or larger) photo-realistic drawings of subjects laboriously executed with graphite on Mylar. He chooses common everyday people, saddles, skulls, vegetables, or utilitarian objects that he finds intriguing in their complexity. The drawings focus attention on minute details that may be overlooked, the fold, the scratch, the flaw, no characteristic is too small to replicate. This extraordinary attention to detail and significance behind those characteristics requires looking deeply into the history of an object to discover what makes its experiences relevant. Mr. Harris will exhibit an array of works from various projects he is currently engaged in for the Mesquite Arts Center.
Marshall Harris was born in San Antonio, Texas but lived all across the United States until his family settled in Fort Worth in 1969. Harris received his BFA in Graphic Design from Texas Christian University in 1979. He was drafted in the National Football league 8th round by the New York Jets but landed in Cleveland Ohio in 1980. Following a career in the National Football League (1980-86, Cleveland Browns, New England Patriots, and New Jersey Generals USFL), Marshall got a real job and turned his attentions towards creative vocations including Advertising Art Director, Marketing Manager, Museum Curator, Graphics Developer, and Exhibit Designer for nationally recognized corporations, Science Museums, Zoos and Aquaria. Some of Harris’s design work includes an exhibition at the National Zoo in Antwerp Belgium and the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium in Taiwan. He also created educational interactive displays for several US Aquaria and Science Museums.
On September 11, 2001, after experiencing the World Trade Tower attacks first hand in New York City, Harris decided to do something different. He enrolled in graduate school in 2007 and received his MFA in sculpture from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia PA in 2010. Finally, Harris had settled on becoming a fine artist. Since then he has developed a unique style and active professional practice and exhibits his fine art nationally. Many of his works are held in corporate and private collections. Marshall Harris was graced with the receipt of the 2013 Hunting Art Prize for his graphite on Mylar portrait of a classic western parade show saddle titled “Round-Up”. The Hunting Art Prize is the largest artist award given for 2-dimensional art in North America. Marshall Harris lives in Fort Worth Texas with his wife June Naylor Harris who is a well-known travel and dining journalist. Marshall recently finished a year-long Artist in Residence program at Fort Works Art in Fort Worth TX and he will be engaged through 2019-2020 in a new Public Arts project as part of the City’s Public Art program. He will also be creating an entirely new body of work for a yet-to-be-scheduled solo exhibition.