What drives someone to create large scale steel and wood sculptures of horses and other animals? For me, my art reflects the people and places that have influenced me.
I grew up on a farm in Berea, Kentucky, where we made almost everything we needed — clothing, quilts, soap, kitchen utensils — and my parents encouraged and valued craftsmanship.
I even got a rare pass on my chores by volunteering to paint the murals for our Baptist church.
As a young man, I moved to Detroit and started a career as a technical illustrator for the automotive industry. That work allowed me to further develop my drawing skills.
Later, I started Art|Harrison Interiors, an interior design and furniture manufacturing business with Arturo Sanchez. As an interior designer, I had access to the materials and tools needed to explore making large-scale sculpture and paintings.
I’m not the first person with roots in both the Bluegrass region of Kentucky and the Motor City, but for me, that journey guided an artistic vision that blends craftsmanship and utilitarian design with an artistic drive to create beautiful objects out of practical materials, like steel and wood.
Craftsmen and women from Appalachia, working with storied companies like the Churchill Weavers and Bybee Pottery, encouraged me at an early age to create and be curious about form and function.
The discipline of industrial design in the automotive industry honed the skill and exposed a farm boy to the arts of metal fabrication and complex model building. Collectively, these experiences have enhanced and influenced my artistic creations in abstract sculpture, painting, and decorative arts.