JENNIFER HARMON

Wardenclyffe is a part of a series of works created by developing scale replica models of iconic industrial structures lost to demolition. While each industrial monument is gone, they are still alive in memories of the people who worked inside them and created social bonds with other workers or live silently in the shadows of cultural development.  

Using the earliest form of photography, the cyanotype becomes a record of the shadows cast by the wire frame scale replicas. The distortion of the shadows is representative of the memories people have which recal a different reality than that which existed, memories changed by atmosphere and emotion. 

Wardenclyffe Tower was located on Long Island. It’s namesake comes from James S. Warden, who in 1901 supplied land for the construction of this tower. With JP Morgan’s financial support, Nikola Tesla constructed a tower that would provide wireless communication between Shoreham, Long Island and England. During his research he discovered a method that would enable the transmission of power without cables. JP Morgan balked at the idea that power could be provided as a free service and withdrew his financial support. With no funding the project sat idle until 1917 when the tower was demolished. The only remains of the tower is its octagonal foundation, which is still present on the Long Island site. Nikola Tesla, resident of New York City (New Yorker Hotel) until his death in 1943. A prolific and genius inventor, his most notable invention is the alternating current electrical system that we use today. A similar technology, like what was invented at Wardenclyffe is now in use worldwide, we know it as our cell phone network.

Media Graphite on Paper, Steel, Flux, Cyanotype

Genre Drawing, Sculpture, Photography

Size Varies

Year 2011

Graphite, Flux, Burn Marks on Paper
76 × 56 cm
2025

Repetitive drawings of identical towers with unique burn marks stand relentlessly organised and progress with time. Beneath each row, rendered in non-photo blue - are inappropriate and discriminatory comments said during the career of a female architect across multiple cultures. Running like an undercurrent which seeks to undermine her qualifications, authority, agency, intelligence and power, the non-photo blue cannot be reproduced, and is invisible to cameras, therefore not recorded and not believed.

This drawing series of cooling towers represents a first step into analyzing the formal qualities of the industrial structures. A close examination of the structural forms documented by  Bernd and Hilla Becher reveals a further level of typological categorization. This drawing series presents a collection of those towers in the manner the Becher's utilized during their typological exhibitions. Within the tabula rasa, the x axis shows the development of the structures' sidedness (or simply how many sides does the tower have), and the types of pyramidal forms (showing a range from regular pyramids to fluted pyramids).

These forms are derived from an evolution of form based upon physical properties and functional requirements of water cooling within industrial complexes. The photographs within Bernd and Hilla Becher's work were closely examined, curated and translated into hand drafted and geometrically constructed elevations and plans. There are gaps that exist within the tabula rasa which reveal typologies that were either dysfunctional or were not photographed by the Bechers.

Source:

Cooling Towers Becher, Bernd and Hilla, MIT Press 2006

Kentile is a part of a series of works created by developing scale replica models of iconic industrial structures lost to demolition. While each industrial monument is gone, they are still alive in memories of the people who worked inside them and created social bonds with other workers or live silently in the shadows of cultural development.  

Using the earliest form of photography, the cyanotype becomes a record of the shadows cast by the wire frame scale replicas. The distortion of the shadows is representative of the memories people have which recal a different reality than that which existed, memories changed by atmosphere and emotion. 

The Kentile sign was a prominent icon in the Gowanus Brooklyn skyline. Kentile, a company that once manufactured asbestos laden floor tiles quickly folded when asbestos was identified as a cancer causing agent. The lights went dim in 1986 and stood for nearly 20 years until it was dismantled in 2014. 

Media Graphite on Paper, Steel, Cyanotype

Genre Drawing, Sculpture, Photography

Year 2010

Cyanotype, Graphite on Gesso, Wood
2010-2020

In Detroit Michigan are thousands of vacant homes that once gave shelter to families, each with their unique lives and memories. The transition of sunlight as it moves through the space through the windows of the house marks the minutes, hours, days, and years, a possible eternity of complexity and beauty. The memories in this house remain timeless and relevant to all. The parents rushing to prepare their eldest child for the first day of Kindergarten, and then years later preparing for High School graduation. A first date, a first kiss. Or the phone call that delivers devastating news. All of these stories familiar to all people exist within these walls, forgotten and soon to be demolished. The walls once house hope and a future, a past and now no longer exist.

A young child spent a year battling a severe illness in Bethesda Naval Hospital. Weakened by extensive treatments, she was confined to her bed allowed to leave only when medically necessary or on special occasions. On one such evening, her mother took her to thank the recovering soldier who made her an angel and to see the hospital's christmas tree. The journey through this art deco monument lead her to rooms filled with stars and a towering lobby space filled with a twinkling christmas tree that must have been a hundred feet high surrounded by the numerous balconies of the elevator landings on each floor. Above it a filigree facade and glass ceiling that revealed the constellations in the night sky that slowly drifted with time.

The child carried and replayed this magical yet haunting memory in her mind for over two decades since she left the hospital.

As an adult her illness threatened a return and she made her pilgrimage to this place she had been happy to leave so many years prior. The building possessed a powerful aura of pain that greeted her as she approached the building. Memories forgotten or repressed flooded into her consciousness - an overwhelming inundation of raw emotion crippled her as she cautiously approached her nemesis. 

But upon entering the building,  she found the lobby with a christmas tree to be a mere shadow of the magnificence that she had written to memory. The true identity of the reality overpowered the vision that gave her security and sanity during her extensive recovery. Glittering gilt railings turned to dull unpolished brass. The heavenly loft of stars were a faded hint of a sparse celestial map painted against a dull slate blue slightly domed ceiling lifted 18 feet above foot. The christmas tree also fell victim to reality - a drab pathetic artificial tree adorned with cheap plastic red ornaments, tattered fake gifts wrapped in wrinkled and delaminated red foil and no twinkling lights sat listlessly in the center of the lobby. An unimpressed woman in uniform sat at the reception desk - almost as if it were her punishment for lack of performance - asked out of obligation if we needed help...

How could this possibly be the same place the woman had visited as a young girl?

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This work was generated by a series of drawings that represent Bethesda Naval Hospital as remembered. The impossible lobby is accentuated and constructed from carbon steel wire. Multiple cyanotype compositions generated by shadows of the wire model of the building attempt to reveal and decode the mystery of the exaggerated memory. 

Media Graphite on Paper, Steel, Cyanotype

Genre Drawing, Sculpture, Photography

Size Varies

Year 2011

The Tenneryly Barn is located on the MacDowell Colony property that was first acquired by Marian and Edward MacDowell. These exposures were made at full scale, capturing the distortion of the shadows we so often see and experience within and around the spaces we inhabit or used to inhabit. The ghostly images capture a moment within the temporal and transient path of the sun that brings space to life.

Made possible by the generosity of the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture, the MacDowell Colony and the Graham Foundation

Invisible views of the sky are rendered with astronomical accuracy revealing territories of constellations and planetary positions. Meaningful dates are used to derive the views. While rendered in acrylic paint, these representations utilize drafting techniques to generate the geometries.