Our Blog: All Things Food and Art

November 10, 2011
Into the Wilderness with Artist Jen Harris

Painter, graphic artist and printmaker Jen Harris developed her limited-edition print series for Fine Artichoke in woodsy Hudson, NY, just 2 hours north of Manhattan. “I was inspired to make the Fearless Forager prints after I moved upstate and began mushroom-hunting and foraging for other wild plants,” explains Jen. “There’s something so exciting about seeing that first morel poking its head up, as if from the underworld, and then suddenly spotting a whole field of mushrooms that were invisible just moments before. I’ve learned about a bunch of other edible and/or medicinal wild plants since moving here: ramps (a.k.a. wild garlic or wild leeks), dandelion greens, wild sorrel, and a host of common weeds. Ramps and morels both appear in the spring, which is a good thing, because they’re delicious eaten together!”

Jen Harris at work in her NY studio

Jen has had two solo shows of her paintings just this year- one at Daniel Cooney Fine Art in Manhattan and another at John Davis Gallery in Hudson. Yet she still carves out time for a flourishing graphic design & printmaking practice through her own design house, Black Sheep Heap. She describes her projects as promoting “sustainability, laughter, and social justice,” and she draws inspiration from all over the map. While designing the Fearless Forager prints, Jen found herself going a little retro; “I’ve been studying the rock posters of the later 60s and early 70s for another project,” she told us, “and I think those aesthetics influenced these designs.”

Jen also explained to us how the Fearless Forager series, like most of her work, has a political dimension: “Foraging is linked with self-sufficiency and abundance, rather than with capitalist consumption, or with the illusion of scarcity that capitalism promotes (and needs to thrive).”

This series of prints displays a masterful blending of bold, pop graphics and graceful naturalism that speaks to the place of sustainability in the modern world. In rich color, these posters remind us of the wide world of food out there just waiting to be discovered. Check out the video below for more on foraging and find out more about Jen on her artist page.

More about foraging for morels and ramps here »