Terra Candella Abstract by Harley Francis

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Harley Francis
Terra Candella Abstract by Harley Francis
1979

About the Item

Wonderful abstract in muted shades with pops of red and burnt orange by Harley Francis (American, 1940-2016), 1979. Signed and dated upper left corner. Presented in rustic painted white slate frame. Condition: Good. Image size: 42.5"H x 29"W. Framed size: 43.5"H x 30"W. Indiana University, Bloomington Indiana 1960-1965 Bachelor of Arts, Oberlin College, Oberlin Ohio 1965-1967 Graduate Assistantship Studied under Robert Barnes, William Bailey, and James McGarrell, Jim Dine, Will Insley, Forbes Whiteside. Art History and Criticism with Ellen Johnson. Completed over 60 credit hours in studio arts including courses in Greek and Roman Art, Western Art, and the Art of India and Asia. Harley had an interest in philately from an early age, and this interest ultimately led him to establishing his own local post, Tristan Local Post, in 1975 in Oberlin, Ohio. The name was chosen because of a long time interest (via philately) in the Tristan da Cunha islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Harley began to issue stamps from Tristan Local Post, but he was not aware of other stamp artists and Mail Art until seeing the catalogue of the artiststamp exhibition organized by James Felter at Simon Fraser University in 1975-76. This opened up various contacts for Harley, and he began to participate in the mail art network. In 1978 Harley closed Tristan Local Post and created his own country, Terra Candella (Land of Light). It was under these auspices that all future mail art would be conducted. He continued to broaden his contacts in the network, including his first trip to Europe in 1980 to meet with other mail artists. Harley facilitated the exhibition of artist samps at Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College in 1978, an exhibition organized by Al Souza. This was followed by a large mail art show curated by Harley at SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, and then in 1987 he organized the Corresponding Worlds exhibition at Allen Memorial Art Museum. The event consisted of both a museum exhibition of artist stamps and mail art, and a symposium. Present at the symposium were Michael Bidner, John P. Jacob, Gerard and Fernand Barbot, Judith Hoffberg, Reid Wood (State of Being), Ed Varney, Dog Fish, E. F. Higgins III, Cracker Jack Kid, John Held Jr., Patrick Bielman, Joel Smith, Joel Lipman, Steven Esrati, and Dennis Higdon. In 1995 Harley moved from Oberlin to California, continuing still to participate in the mail art network and organize exhibitions related to mail art and artist stamps. Harley was born in New Albany, Indiana and lived in Graton, CA at the time of his death. He is survived by his partner Hamlet Mateo, his children Tristan Francis and Gabrielle Francis-Zenger, their mother, Harley's former wife, Patricia Snow, his former partner Kevin Burton, his sister, Joyce Blair and his grandchildren. I am, above all else, a passionate and lifelong student of Art. -- Harley Residents of Oberlin, the small college town in Ohio where Harley lived for many years, might, if they happened to be taking a late night walk during the late seventies, glimpse a bearded figure, cigar jutting from its mouth, moving about in the brightly lit, second floor art studio above the stores flanking one side of the town square. On a hot summer’s night one might, drawing closer, hear the faint strains of Italian opera. The studio, filled with ceramics, drawings, paintings, collage, jungle-like plants, and a neatly assembled jumble of old yet functional odds and ends of furniture and rugs, was a temple of sorts, perfumed with the incense of cigar smoke, and inhabited by that oddity of human society, an artist with no vocation other than art, no trust fund, and no day job. Father and then grandfather, husband and partner, lover, friend, Harley lived a large and complex life driven by large and complex appetites. “Simply speaking,” he would say in his nasal, and sometimes acerbic manner, “My needs are greater than my fears.” He simultaneously embraced the artistic fantasy of royalty while being unabashedly true to his family’s Indiana farming roots, and he would often regale visitors to his studio with tales of his grandmother, who would fly out of the farmhouse and use a rake to club a snake out of a tree, then finish cooking a gargantuan breakfast concluded with several homemade pies. Harley loved life and he wanted to live longer than he did. Even as his health declined, he adapted, as he always did, to continue making art. If he didn’t have money to buy paint and canvas, he would glue labels and tickets and cancelled stamps, bits of foil and cigar bands, to paper. When he could no longer stand upright to make large paintings, he sat and created smaller works. One of his chief survival tools was a wicked and sardonic wit, and his family members report that he made them laugh in the last few days of his life, even joking with the nurses as he returned to consciousness, in pain, after what was his final surgery in a hospital in Northern California, where he made his home for the past almost thirty years. Harley’s art was never sold widely in famous galleries, though his extensive participation in the mail art movement made him known internationally; he survived through skillfully cultivating and maintaining a far-flung community of friends and acquaintances who would be invited to the house for dinner or a birthday party, and who might leave with a painting or set of drawings that had begun to speak to them, perhaps forcefully or, as Harley loved to say, sotto voce. The painter of unicorns, the postmaster and resident ruler of Terra Candella, the Land of Light, has set down his brush.

Creator:
Harley Francis (1940 - 2017, American)
Creation Year:
1979
Dimensions:
Height: 43.5 in (110.49 cm)Width: 30 in (76.2 cm)Depth: 1.5 in (3.81 cm)
Medium:
Canvas,Oil
Movement & Style:
Abstract Geometric
Period:
1970-1979
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Soquel, CA
Reference Number:
Seller: D57241stDibs: LU5424616672