Virginia Harrison

I was born in Denver Colorado in 1950. I was raised in an elegant mansion and was destined to become a debutant. However, my inclination toward sculpting had already begun in my father’s tool shop and in the Rocky Mountains. After 2 years at a woman’s college in Virginia I traveled to Europe and India. I married Allan in 1974. We raised two daughters who remember the numerous art and craft projects that were the mainstay of playtime and the trips to the art museums in San Francisco.

In 1988-90 I attended Sonoma State University, pursuing my love of tools and sculpture. I wove my first basket out of copper and aluminum wire for and installation I called “Mother Basket”. After graduating I was hired at the Bronze Plus foundry in Sebastopol as a metal chaser. I continued to weave copper baskets, and during that time, I developed a way to weave with bronze wire. At the foundry bronze wire is used for welding, but by casting a bronze bowl as a base and welding bronze spines to it I found it was possible to weave the welding wire in the open spines. I then soldered another larger wire around the top to finish the vessel. Soon I found that I was able to go beyond the vessel shape and create more and more complex sculptures. The patina which was added at the end gave the color which completed the work. The sculptor Rodin and the painter Kandinsky are the artists who inspire me the most. Kandinsky believed that music was the purest form of abstraction in art and he worked in his painting to bring color and form to that same level of purity. As with Kandinsky, music plays a fundamental role in my creations. I use movement of the rhythms and the arc of the sound to create shapes in my mind and then transform them into sc...