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Harris & Ros Barron

Harris and Ros Barron first met in the early 1950s in the inaugural class of Charles Abbott’s ceramics program at Massachusetts College of Art, and married in 1953. Beyond their individual work in painting, sculpture, performance, and time-based mediums, the couple also collaborated on a number of works and projects through commissions and residencies. Acquired by the Addison in the early years of the artists’ career, Three Moons debuted at Kanegis Gallery in Boston in 1958 in one of their first exhibitions together. With its earthy materials and mythic symbols, Three Moons builds on the Baudelairian language and Surrealist imagery relating to the moon that so inspired members of the New York School like Jackson Pollock, William Baziotes, and Robert Motherwell, whose work is on view in the adjacent gallery. For the six decades since their artistic and matrimonial union, Harris and Ros Barron have maintained adjoining studios and responded to one another’s work while in progress. Despite the inherently fluid and at times fragile nature of the process of creation, the artists have always maintained an element of playfulness in their practice, adopting sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s view that “when we are no longer children, we are already dead.”  

Harris and Ros Barron

Harris and Ros Barron

Three Moons, 1958 ceramic and cement 1958.51 museum purchase

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