Draft:Jesse Harrod

Jesse Harrod is a visual artist working in sculpture, painting, textiles and fiber art (specifically macramé), ceramics, stained glass, and other media. Harrod explores the potentials of abstraction, feminist and queer histories, and embodiment through multimedia works that often employ colorful paracord, a commercially available synthetic cord used in parachutes. Harrod is represented by Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, and works as Associate Professor and Program Head of Fiber & Material Studies at Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University (Philadelphia, PA).Fleisher/Ollman Gallery » Artists » Jesse Harrod

Early Life & Education
Born in South Africa, Harrod moved with her family to Toronto, Canada, as a child. Harrod is nuerodivergent and from a young age made art as a way of managing disability and illness. Harrod received a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University and an MFA from the department of Fiber & Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Career
Renowned for her work in sculpture and macramé and for her contributions to queer and feminist art production, Harrod has shown work as part of solo and group exhibitions internationally and her work is in the permanent collections of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI) , Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (New York, NY) , and Mark Rothko Art Centre (Daugavpils, Latvia).

Notable exhibitions include Jesse Harrod: Tough Nut (2023) and Mending and Repair in Response with Lisi Raskin (2019), both at  Fleisher/Ollman Gallery (Philadelphia, PA); Hatch (2019-2020) at Bowtie Projects (Los Angeles, CA) , Flaggin’ 1,2,3 (2018) at Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, NY) ; Toxic Shock and Hotdog (2016) at Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA)   , and Low Ropes Course (2015) at NurtureArt (Brooklyn, NY) , for which a publication of the same name featuring writing by art historian Jenni Sorkin and artist Allyson Mitchell, amongst others, was published by Publication Studio. Harrod's work has also been included in such notable group exhibitions and publications as In Practice: Material Deviance (2017) at SculptureCenter (Queens, NY)  ; Haptic Tactics (2018)  and the traveling exhibition Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community (2014-2016), both organized by Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York, NY)  ; and Even Thread Has a Speech (2019-2020) at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI).

Harrod has participated in several artist residencies and visiting artist programs including John Michael Kohler Arts Center's Art/Industry program; Fire Island Artist Residency ; the Icelandic Textile Center ; the Vermont Studio Center ; Recycled Artist in Residency - Philadelphia ; the Museum of Art and Design, and MacDowell Residency , among others. In 2022, Harrod was invited by Transart Institute to participate in the "What Knots Knot Knots" research symposium at The 8th Floor in New York, NY, amongst such artists and collectives as Zachary Fabri and The Institute of Queer Ecology.

In 2020, Harrod was awarded a Visual Arts Fellowship by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.