ENCoMPaSS remembrance

& renewal a multi-generational art event

The spring of 2023 marks a moment of reverence and rejuvenation for Harwood Art Center. In March of 2020, just weeks before the pandemic up-rooted global routines, systems, and lives, we welcomed thousands of visitors to our campus in celebration of our creative community at Encompass. Since then, we have hosted adapted versions of this event, both at a distance and with scaled down in person programming. In 2023, we are honored to present Encompass in its fullest form since the onset of the pandemic; Encompass: Remembrance & Renewal is a time to honor and feel what has been lost, as well as look ahead to what is blossoming.

In our hall gallery, a collective of artists, performers and healers create Grief Movement, a sacred place of collective contemplation and restoration. Led by breana connor, the project dismantles our western tendency to grieve in solitude. An altar at the helm of the gallery invites visitors to offer relics of love and loss, both big and small. Grief Movement reminds the individual that heartbreak and healing can be communal and connective experiences.

Our front gallery features Archive of Memory: A Visual Journal Retrospective by Juliana Coles. Her library of journals combine text, collage, painting, and drawing, reflecting three decades of artistic practice.The journals are alive with color, texture and raw experience. Juliana is a cherished member of Harwood’s creative community, collaborating with us through many milestones of her career. Archive of Memory represents a full circle, not only in Juliana’s robust and revolutionary practice, but also in Harwood’s history of working alongside artists as they evolve.

Encompass: Remembrance & Renewal breathed restorative life into our campus with the return of open studios with our 39 resident artists, art making activities by our collaborating teachers, music by DJ Anjo, and three additional exhibitions: Art To Save the World by the students of Escuela del Sol Montessori; Cross Pollination by Harwood outreach, apprenticeship and collaborative program artists; and All Together by Harwood + Escuela staff artists, teaching artists and studio artists.

In all, we see the tremendous resilience of creativity, and the power of arts and artists to endure and evolve through immense societal change. We gathered with new friends and old, basking in the memory of what was and reveling in the possibilities of what may be.

Helen Atkins, Jordyn Bernicke & Julia Mandeville Co-Curators & Cooperative Leadership Team, Harwood Art Center