Epitaph, 2022

Making Earth and Art Park, 1970

These two works serve as “book-ends” to The Harrisons’ life-long work together—one from very early in their career and the other, Newton’s final work.

Epitaph, two large tablets that appear much like the Ten Commandments, is a testament to Harrison’s late wife and question to what he calls the “web of life.” He asks how humans can humble themselves and the response is a set of rules—or commandments—for our behavior, particularly towards the environment. The “web of life” conveys how nature is a vast network of entangled ecosystems that must be respected, not controlled. At the end, it says: “Learn from your companion species how to join me.”

Accompanying Epitaph is a video interview with The Harrisons about an early work, Making Earth and Art Park (1970), providing insight into how their individual talents coalesced into their unique and sustaining collaborative process. With Newton’s background in art, math and science and Helen’s in language, education, and social psychology, their practice became an ongoing dialogue with each other and their myriad collaborators across disciplines.

“With their research-based, collaborative practice, the Harrisons have influenced generations of artists, including those in this exhibition,” says curator David Familian. “Working on complex problems across a broad range of disciplines, their artistic process mirrors the intent of Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty: to reveal and explore the interconnections between various complex systems.”

“Working on complex problems across a broad range of disciplines, their artistic process mirrors the intent of Future Tense: to reveal and explore the interconnections between various complex systems.” —David Familian, Curator of Future Tense

Sketches of Sensorium, 2024

For this exhibition, Newton Harrison wanted to premiere Sensorium for the World Ocean, a multi-sensory immersive installation that sets out to directly address the survival problems the world ocean faces as temperatures continue to rise. Sadly, he passed away in 2022, so we could not realize the project for this exhibition.

Sketches for Sensorium, interpreting core elements of Sensorium for the World Ocean, is on view at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) as a satellite to the Beall Center’s PST Art exhibition. Following Newton’s wishes, it is presented with an original spatialized composition and an interactive data world in UCSB’s AlloSphere, a three-story, echo-free metal sphere with a large, dynamic, digital projection.

“In the two years I worked with Newton, he always framed potential solutions to the enormous global problem of climate change through the lens of systems thinking,” says curator David Familian. “In this methodology, one must look holistically and simultaneously at multiple aspects of a dynamic, constantly shifting system, from the microcosmic to macrocosmic. Both Newton and Helen live on the memories with those fortunate to have worked with them.”

View Sketches of Sensorium at The AlloSphere Research Facility (621 Elings Hall, UC Santa Barbara) on 2nd Thursdays (5:30–7:30 pm), 4th Saturdays (1:30–3:30 pm), and Monday—Friday afternoons by appointment only. For queries email allosphere@ucsb.edu and book your preferred exhibition date via the reservation form.

“In the two years I worked with Newton, he always framed potential solutions to the enormous global problem of climate change through the lens of systems thinking.” —David Familian, Curator of Future Tense

Helen Mayer Harrison (1927–2018) and Newton Harrison (1931–2022) were leaders of environmental art or the “eco-art” movement. The Harrisons collaborated for more than 40 years with biologists, ecologists, architects, urban planners, and other artists to initiate dialogues to uncover ideas and solutions that support biodiversity and community development. Their works take the form of research-based installations and interactive environments. Equally micro and macro-focused, their close examinations of subjects unveil larger apparatuses of political, economic, and social powers that exert their influence on the environment. The Harrisons’ ongoing legacy informs a global movement of contemporary artists, activists, and thinkers.