About Edie
Edie Harper (American, –) was trained at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where she studied printmaking with Maybelle and Wilson Stamper and color theory with Josef Albers. She is best known as a painter, photographer, and illustrator, although she created a rich body of work in other media: jewelry, enamels, sculpture, silkscreen prints, and weavings. Her work has been featured in Graphic Content at Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center and in Minimal Realism at the Cincinnati Art Museum. She also illustrated the children's book My Nose Is Running by Louise Bonnett-Rampersaud.
Her life was fondly remembered in a retrospective from ArtistsNetwork.
Profile from Frame House Gallery
Edie Harper describes herself as a Jill of all trades trying to master one
. Since graduating from the Cincinnati Art Academy, she has worked with photography, wood-sculpture, weaving, and jewelry design, as well as painting and printmaking.
Her husband, well-known serigraph artist Charles harper, calls her the thinking man's Bible illustrator
. Edie says pictures are painted for different reasons. Sometimes an idea is triggered by a title and its fun-potential. It's challenging to give familiar plots a new slant—a new look at the old book.
Not all of her work is of a Biblical nature. Currently, Edie is looking ahead into the past
with plans for prints on childhood experiences
.
She has exhibited both paintings and photographs at the Cincinnati Art Museum, weavings at the College of Mount St. Joseph, and enamels at the Syracuse Art Museum. Her serigraphs were selected for an Invitational Print Show at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and for display at the Andover Art Museum in Massachusetts.
circa 1976
Although not as famous for it as her husband, Edie Harper did pick up some of his sense of humor, and it shows in the descriptions for some of her art pieces:
- Baby Moses
- Moses was the lucky son of a woman clever enough to be a marine engineer. She designed a papyrus basket, sealed it with tar and pitch, then hid her three-month-old baby inside and placed him among the reeds of the Nile. According to plan, the daughter of the pharaoh (who had vowed to kill all Hebrew boys) heard the baby's cries and adopted him. Somehow, the aged ruler was too addled to figure out his identity. That came back to bite Ramses in the asp when Moses grew up and led his enslaved people to freedom in the exodus.
- Cat in Basket
- Hang it on the door,
Ring the bell.
Shh! Shh!
Here she comes.
SURPRISE! - Couch Petatoes
- Push come to shove,
No finer place.
Why seek a basket or box
Instead of such a comfy spot?
A pet's home sweet home
High atop the couch. - Family Portrait
- Ready? Now look straight ahead.
Keep your eyes on the birdie.
Hold still. Don't move. Hold that pose.
And they have—for nineteen centuries. - In the Garden
- He walked in the garden alone while the dew was still on the roses. But He didn't promise a rose garden. As a man soweth, so shall he reap. So sow. So reap. He promised a victory garden. Letuspray.
- Little David
- Leave them alone and they'll come home wagging their tails behind them, goes the tale. But don't let them pull the wool over your eyes: They are gazing and grazing and thinking of straying unless you are playing. So, Little David, stay sharp, play on your harp, and watch your p's and q'ewes.
- Magic Cat
- In spirit realms,
She works her charms.
A stare. A tug at the heart.
WATCH OUT!
The spell is cast.
ABRACADABRA! - Net Prophet
- On the Sea of Galilee they cast their nets upon the water but caught naught. Net profit—aught. Along came Jesus. He said,
Fishermen, follow me and become fishers of men. I will fill your nets and your lives.
They did and He did. - Noazark
- …and Noah said,
Embark my ark! Weather man calls for rain—hundred percent chance.
And the creatures came and the rains came, forty days and forty nights, rain followed by rain. Phew! A zoo—a zoo in the rain! Rain, rain, go away, and it did. Then God said to leave the ark and multiply and they did and that's where He made his biggest Errorat. - WOW!
- WOW! Walking on water! The disciples couldn't believe it. But He did. And they did.