Today we’d like to introduce you to Carole Harmel.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Carole. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I started as an English Lit major at Smith College, Mass. I took a Jr. Year Abroad in Edinburgh Scotland, and joined the photo club, and fell in love with the darkroom. Upon my return to the US, I decided to transfer to Antioch College because of the freedom it offered to travel between disciplines. After majoring in art, I entered the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, to major in photography.
I had amazing teachers: Barbara Crane, Frank Barsotti, Ken Josephson, and Harold Allen. Upon graduating SAIC, I began teaching in the City Colleges of Chicago and ended at Truman, where I taught until 2007. I helped form Artemisia Gallery, a woman’s collective, and eventually, a gallery within the Gallery with Jane Wenger and Carol Turchan because there were so few women being promoted in photography. However, I also always honored male artists, I did not discriminate and still do not. I don’t feel talent is male/female designated.
I showed early on in many different galleries including N.A.M.E., Stuart Wilbur, Rhona Hoffman, Betsey Rosenfield, and eventually, was taken on by Printworks, Chi., who represented my work for over 40 years. I also had shows in NYC, and nationally as well. After I retired from CCC, I could work full-time and began collaborating with other Chicago Artists on projects based on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
After that, I collaborated with Lialia Kuchma, a master weaver and photographer whom I met at Artemisia. Recently, when she no longer wished to weave my photographs, I took weaving classes so I could weave my own photographs. I am currently working on curating group shows at the Bridgeport Art Center and Gallery 116, St. Charles, Il. with various Chicago artists whom I admire.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The hardest part was when I was trying to juggle teaching, child raising (my artist husband Arthur Lerner and I adopted a child from China in 1994) and doing my own work. However, one manages in one way or another, and now she, our beautiful talented daughter, Alexandra Mae Fu-Kai Lerner Harmel is an artist in her own right and teaching art in the Baltimore public schools.
She graduated with a BA and MFA in teaching from the Maryland Institute College of Art last year, with semesters in Sorrento Italy and Osaka, Japan. We recently had a three-person show in Chicago titled “All in the Family”.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Carole Harmel Photography – what should we know?
It is not really a business. We just try and sell our art as best we can. I am proud that we can do our personal work, and sell it from time to time, thanks to our histories at the CCC. My husband and I both worked in the CCC at a time when many low-income students were being sponsored.
We both feel that we were lucky because it was a time when there was money for art, and we both had wonderful, excellent students. I remember I had a visiting artist from SAIC, who said that the students at Harry S. Truman College in Upton were better than the students they had at the SAIC.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
My teachers at the SAIC: Barbara Crane, Harold Allen, Ken Josephsen and Frank Barsotti. I was coming from a very non-traditional background: Painting emulsion on stones, glass and other materials. But they put up with me and I survived, despite some difficult critiques.
My fellow Artemesians such as Margaret Wharton, Carol Turchan, Barbara Grad and later Jane Wenger in particular. My husband Arthur Lerner, who has always given me good advice, and most recently my daughter Alexandra who teaches me a lot, and I love hearing about what the current generation thinks!.
Arthur and I went to Maine in the summers, which taught me the value of having time as an artist, and there we met Arthur’s classmate Lennart Anderson, whom I photographed, and he strangely did teach me a lot about art in general. Together with his wife Barbara, we did a series called “White Dresses” a kind of history of our summers in Maine. Barbara and Lennart and now the daughter, Jeanette, continue to be inspirations.
Along with learning to weave, I have been taking classes in Russian literature at the Newberry Library in Chicago, with an inspired teacher Julia Denne. It began when I did a show at Printworks based on a Gogol short story called “The Nose” and I googled Gogol, and came up with Julia at the Newberry. This was about 10 years ago and I am still taking classes with her. Somehow I guess I relate more with Russian lit than English Lit!
Pricing:
- My prices at Printworks range from $1000.00 to 2,000.00, but I am willing to negotiate.
Contact Info:
- Address: 4728 N. Virginia Ave. Chicago, IL 60625 2nd
- Website: caroleharmel.com
- Phone: 773-334-2422
- Email: caroleharmel@comcast.net
Image Credit:
Leaving Home from “Natural Disasters”
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