Harrell Fletcher’s Art Ideas

2006

Editor's note: In the late 00s I was living in California, working as a museum curator, and increasingly doing more public practice-based works and performances. On a date that took me to a talk by Nato Thompson at UArts, we started corresponding. I think I met Temporary Services through him, and then I guess Ted Purves somehow as well after I moved to SoCal. Social practice was starting to coalesce, become an art movement, for better and for worse. I traveled up to SF a lot, and went to events organized collaboratively between Machine Project (LA) and Southern Exposure (SF). I think Harrell brought his MFA students down (maybe he had just started the program?) and I met them. I was myself thinking of going back to school, and considering both Ted’s CCA program (MFA in Social Practice) and Harrell’s Portland State program (MFA in Public Practice). I don’t know why I’m giving all this background. In any case, I’m a fan of a lot of Harrell’s work. I used to love visiting his website and reading his ‘art ideas’, a list of ideas that he put out into the world that he would like to be commissioned to do. Some of them did end up being realized. Here they are, gone from his website, but preserved as a PDF.

A list of 99 project and exhibit ideas listed on artist Harrell Fletcher’s website, circa 2006.

Hosted at Internet Archive

Harrell Fletcher is an artist and educator working in social practice art. In 2007 he founded the Art + Social Practice MFA program at Portland State University. Many of his projects and exhibits engage with strangers, the public and folks that may not identify as artists.