Planning everything out and having it all defined? No thank you, not for this artist

Artist Denja Harris would prefer not to know. For example, when she reflects on completing her first solo museum exhibition earlier this year, the period leading up to it was full of unknowns and she loved it.

“I think the ways that I navigated through it is still kind of just finding comfort in that lack of definition, even trying to turn anxiety into excitement about not knowing what is going to happen next. That’s the fun part. I don’t know who wants to know everything ahead of time, so the unknown just leaves so much possibility. If everything is defined and you’re just boxed in, it’s rigid. I love not knowing anything; the less I know, the better,” she says. “I feel like, being a Capricorn — and I don’t know much about astrology, but I do know myself — I can tend to be so rigid. As I get older and the more I work as an artist, it’s probably really helped me become less rigid and more fluid in my life. My practice is very intuitive and spontaneous and not planned. I think, maybe, that has helped me be that way in my personal life.”

Harris is a contemporary fiber artist whose work includes soft sculpture and installation, with group and solo exhibitions beginning just a few years ago, in 2021. She uses both dead-stock and new yarns, taking an intuitive and spontaneous approach to her work, which most recently was featured at the Oceanside Museum of Art with “The Space Between: Texture Studies by Denja Harris,” with suspended rug pieces, sculptures, interlocking chain pieces with spikes — all made from yarns on cloth.

Growing up in the South Bay, specifically in Imperial Beach, she describes her home life as one with lots of homemaking. Her grandmother had 11 kids and made their clothes, her mom made her Halloween costumes, and she recalls gathering scraps of fabric to make clothes for her Barbies and transforming a pair of blue, nylon pants from her middle school uniform into a bathing suit. A long love of thrifting led her to try hand embroidery around 2018 or 2019, which introduced her to chain stitch embroidery machines (“they’re really old, they’re really big, they’re really expensive, they’re very rare,” she says), and finally the purchase of her first tufting machine during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A full-time artist since 2023, Harris lives in Lemon Grove with her partner, Austin Mahn, and her German shepherd, Willow. She took some time to talk about exploring themes of softness, vulnerability, and connection in her work, and what inspires her creatively.

Q: How would you describe your art, currently? Yourself as an artist?

A: I think it changes because I still feel fairly new. There are people who have been doing this very seriously since they were, like, teenagers. That’s not the case for me, so I’m still kind of figuring it out. At the core of it, it’s like an outlet for me to communicate what I feel like I can’t say. It’s the best way for me to communicate my feelings, through art, which I feel like is common for everyone.

What I love about Lemon Grove…

I love that I’m a little isolated from the city, but I’m not too far off the 94 to go places. But yeah, it’s quiet here, I have a big backyard, I have a driveway. It’s just quiet and a little more spacious. 

Q: What would you say inspires you in the work that you’ve been creating over the last few years?

A: I’ve been thinking about that, too. I think it’s my daily life. I’m trying to process, or communicate something. I’m not really sure what, but I think I am really inspired by the logic and the pattern of quilt making and how, in quilting, you can play with different repetitions and different colors. I don’t know much about it, but I think I’m inspired by that and just different textiles, in general. I really love and I’m really, really inspired by Sheila Hicks. I’m really inspired by Franz West and Josef Albers, to be specific with other artists, but I don’t really know where my inspiration comes from. It comes from just color combinations together, and it’s very unplanned. I kind of just throw all my yarn on the ground, or dig around and see what kind of balls up naturally, and what color combinations work well together, and some line work on my frame. I don’t know if it comes from being inspired by something, or just needing to communicate something.

Sheila Hicks and Josef Albers, I’m really inspired by their use of color. I didn’t go to art school, and I’m still learning about them, so I can’t really say why I am inspired by them in a very eloquent, academic way, but I just know that I’m responding to their use of color and texture. I also really love Jenny Holzer. She is a visual artist, but I think more contemporary. I really enjoy her use of words, so I find it very poetic, and I feel like some of the titles of my work are kind of inspired by her use of words or language.

Q: In your first solo museum exhibition this year at the Oceanside Museum of Art with “The Space Between: Texture Studies by Denja Harris,” the museum’s website quotes you as saying your pieces mirror “our collective human experience, an ongoing navigation of uncertainty, patience, and becoming. In this way, absence holds as much weight as presence.” Can you talk about that last line, about absence and presence, and what that has meant for you and looked like in your own life?

A: I’ve been thinking about that exhibition and doing a lot of reflecting. I think, at the end of the day, what I was trying to say with that exhibition is, instead of trying to define the meaning behind things, it was more so being comfortable in the lack of meaning or definition. I think, in that lack is where you open yourself up to more possibilities because nothing’s defined. There are no bounds, there’s no guidelines, which leaves everything open to possibility and change and solidity and just being comfortable in that lack of definition.

Q: Are there examples of pieces you were working on where you were feeling that more prominently, and how that may have shown up in your work?

A: There are definitely two pieces — one is called “Threshold” and another one is called “Becoming.” Those two pieces feature negative space, which is just large cutouts within the piece itself. With those pieces, specifically, I was trying to kind of communicate that lack of definition, or that space, and leaving that lack of definition or space up to the viewer to interpret what meaning they find in that.

Q: In an interview with KPBS, you talked about perceptions of softness for Black women. Can you talk about what initially got you thinking about this idea? And, why is it important to you to address this idea of softness in your work?

A: This is such a vulnerable topic for me that could trigger something in my childhood because I’ve always been told to smile, or that I’m being aggressive. I mean, not always, but there have been times in my teens and early 20s, and it, unfortunately, shaped part of my sense of self where I feel like I’m always viewed in a harsher light than I really am. Also, I’m pretty reserved and quiet and shy, maybe even aloof. I’m not that outgoing until you get to know me, so I think that’s why it’s personally important to me. Again, my art is just a way for me to communicate my feelings, and that’s one of them. I think that’s the beauty of the space between, and the unknown. I just love constantly growing and changing and evolving, and not being comfortable. I don’t think, unfortunately, my nervous system has been regulated since I started in this art journey, but I feel like, if I’m comfortable, then I’m not growing. I love the unknown.

Q: You’ve said that you like going to thrift stores, yard sales, and estate sales where you find vintage yarn for your work, and any other items that catch your eye. Do you have go-to local spots for thrift stores, consignment stores? Neighborhoods you like to frequent for their yard sales and estate sales?

A: Oh, I don’t want to blow up my spots (laughs). I will suggest, like, my partner got me a ton of yarn from this man in La Jolla through Facebook Marketplace last Christmas or my birthday last year. His wife had passed away and she was an avid weaver, so they had a ton of really beautiful yarn. So, Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace.

Q: What has your work taught you about yourself?

A: I think it taught me that I’m not as rigid and a control freak. All through my 20s, I was just working to survive, basically. I think it’s opened up a new part of me that’s definitely expressive in a way that’s more publicly vulnerable and not just in my journal or something.

Q: Please describe your ideal San Diego weekend.

A: I love waking up early, probably out of the door by 8:30, and then going to get a little iced coffee — it doesn’t matter if summer or winter, it will always be getting a little iced coffee. Then, hit a few thrift stores and go sit in the sunshine in a park, or go to Sunset Cliffs, go eat food, go look at art. A typical San Diego day.

Q: Where do you like to look at art?

A: I love Bread & Salt, I love MCASD, I love Deixis Gallery. I haven’t been to Mingei in a few years, but I love Mingei. I recently saw a really good show at a place that’s not a very common art place that you would think of—it’s a restaurant in North Park called Mabel’s Gone Fishing.