Object Poems

Harriet Bart
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Homage (Helmut Löhr 1955–2010)

Visual poet Helmut Lohr and I were friends and collaborators for twenty years. We exhibited our work together in various galleries and museums in the United Sates, Germany, and Holland. Helmut died Christmas Day 2010. In May 2011 I went to Santa Fe to help organize his memorial service. The black case and the deconstructed vinyl letters were part of the flotsam and jetsam of his studio. The bottles with blue corks containing disks of text were part of the memorial project I created for him.

I believe in the alchemy of the word, the iconography of text, the labyrinth of the book.

Vintage case, cut text, glass vials. 2011. Unique.

SOLD!

About the Artist

Harriet Bart creates evocative content through the narrative power of objects, the theater of installation, and the intimacy of artists books.   She has a deep and abiding interest in the personal and cultural expression of memory; it is at the core of her work. Using bronze and stone, wood and paper, books and words, everyday and found objects, Bart's work signifies a site, marks an event, and draws attention to imprints of the past as they live in the present.

Bart's work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Germany, and she has completed more than a dozen public art commissions in the United States, Japan, and Israel. Since 2000, Bart has published seven fine-press books and won two Minnesota Book Awards. Her work is included in many museum, university, and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Weisman Art Museum, Jewish Museum, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry. Harriet Bart is a guest lecturer and curator, and founding member of the Traffic Zone Center for Visual Arts in Minneapolis.