Harlan Mack
Harlan Mack is a Vermont born multidisciplinary artist based at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. He employs blacksmithing, steel fabrication, painting, and oral storytelling to build an expanding, constellated narrative that invites viewers and listeners into an elaborate imaginary future timeline. This world is generated and inspired by Harlan’s life experience, exploration and thoughts around identity, labor, perception, contemplation, fiction, community, emergence and afro-futurism.
Harlan is work is currently being shown in Looking Outward – Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center, Stowe ,VT, Whirligig Brewing, St. Johnsbury VT, and Highland Center for the Arts, Greensboro, VT.
Harlan’s work can also be found online through his website, and on instagram as, @harlan_mack , as well as @bloodmountainforge.
Harlan’s most recent body of work incorporates brightly painted reclaimed wooden fence and blackened forged steel elements, constructed into symbolic references depicted within his narrative future. Harlan’s use of forged steel faces and animal figures symbolize the complexity within every moment lived. Through this type of distillation and combination, Harlan, invites the viewer to contemplate, revive, and utilize the potential from disuse as a cornerstone to what comes next.
