Hommage to Burgess Shale 1988

Curator: This is Erwin Harris' "Hommage to Burgess Shale," part of the collections at the Harvard Art Museums. It strikes me as deeply meditative; the sepia tones and delicate paper give it a timeless, almost primordial feel. Editor: I'm intrigued by the artist’s process. The way the image is transferred onto the paper… it speaks of labor, of careful attention to the materiality of the print itself. Curator: Absolutely. It’s as if Harris is conjuring these ancient life forms from the very fabric of the paper. The Burgess Shale fossils are a window into a lost world, and he invites us to dream of it, too. Editor: And, interestingly, the scale and its placement evoke not just scientific illustration but also the handmade quality of craft. It challenges those divisions. Curator: Yes, it blurs boundaries—science, art, craft, past, and present—all swirling together. I find it endlessly fascinating. Editor: It leaves me pondering the labor involved in not only creating the print, but also extracting knowledge from the earth.