By Meg Duffy
Photos by Todd Brooks

When Raymond Salvatore Harmon paints, he likes to get up close and personal with the piece. Shoes are discouraged as he walks the floor, surveys the scene, and paints directly on the ground beneath his feet. His multi-eyed creatures wave their many arms as they crawl towards an all-seeing eye. Layering colorful circles to create complex shapes, Harmon’s work sometimes seems like it’s from another planet. I managed to pin down this nomadic soul for five minutes and asked him about his recent show at New York City’s Secret Project Robot Gallery.

Did you have any formal education? When did you start officially working and exhibiting in galleries?
My education background is in cultural anthropology, but I have been painting since I was young, like 13 or so. I was involved in a kind of experimental arts laboratory classroom in high school in Michigan. In the late 80’s, we had digital computer graphics, VR and animation software. We were beta testing Disney’s first internal animation software, “Disney Paint,” about a year before I graduated. It was a full range art class environment: computer suites, painting studio, design room. All this was happening before almost any university had a digital arts program. As a painter I did my first show sometime in the mid 1990’s. I’d had some ‘private viewing’ shows before then through people I know. I have always spent a lot more time in the exploration of new forms and ideas than I do in building exhibitions.

What spurred your interest in Kabbalah and mysticism?
My interest in the esoteric came at a very early age. Around 11 or so I had a love of mythology and was fascinated by Dante. After reading my way through my library’s books on world myth I stumbled onto a book called 9 Visionary Girls about the Salem witch trials. From there, it grew into D&D and eventually into serious study of the Kabbalah and Thelema by my late teens. It’s just something that has always fascinated me and influenced everything I do. Even before any reading I spent a lot of my childhood thinking about ideas like “god” and the shape of the universe. I guess most kids do, I just never outgrew it.

You mix so many different techniques: graffiti, web-based media, performance, paint, etc. How did you become a jack-of-all-trades? Was the process filled with more education or experimentation?
I have a lot of ideas about things and in order to see them done I have had to learn to use a lot of different tools. Some of them are physical, while others are software-based. Different creative concepts take on specific forms and require a wide range in terms of execution. I give equal value to a soldering iron, a can of spray paint, a brush or some design or photo software. My education came from my friends and the environments we inhabited.

Since we at PE3L love a good graff story, could you tell us a little about your graffiti style ad bombing?
I did a series of pieces where I went onto subways systems in San Francisco and Chicago with stenciled text statements meant to look like hip adverts. They were placed on the bit of the train above people’s heads where ads go. I just slipped them into the slots. Each stencil was a web domain on which I had placed some piece of interactive art. There were three or four sets of 200 made and distributed. One was “doyoueverunderstand.com” another was “Ihavealwayslivedhere.org.” All that was on them was the domain in big letters and some abstract stenciled shapes. One site got about 30,000 hits in a month, which isn’t bad for the early 2000’s.

The other side of the piece was that I used spam software to email specific cultural institutes (like museums, etc). In the email I used software to mask myself as the director of the institute so that all the employees from the institute thought they were getting an email from the boss. Each email’s subject was “Have you seen this?” with just a link and the signature of the director. I used tracking software to document how many of the people I sent the emails to actually looked at the site. You’d be surprised at the accuracy. Usually at least half looked, with 60 of the 70 people I emailed at the Whitney checking it out within two days.

The idea was that graffiti is a lot more than a tag or a stylish picture. It can be a command, a bit of code placed into the urban environment that changes the way those who see it act. What seems like poetry on the subway turns out to be a map to some other, more abstract thing.

Your style tends to lean more towards the abstract. What are the advantages and disadvantages of working in this surrealist realm as opposed to a more realistic approach?
The thing about abstraction is that it’s open to interpretation. Some people see the color/form and that’s it. Others think they see the figurative hidden inside and draw meaning from that. With my paintings I use a great deal of abstract patterns, but they almost always take the shape of some organic being. I am fascinated with organic forms; especially those forms that are alien to us yet hold some semblance of life and movement. Over the past few years my paintwork has become dominated by the trance/visions I have during ecstatic experiences.

This time around, what direction are you trying to go in? Is there anything new you’re experimenting with/trying this time around?
My current street work grew out of the drawing diaries I have kept for years of psychedelic inspirations. Bits and pieces of trance states that come out as sea creatures and abstract patterns. My first street work started when I lived in NYC in the mid 1990’s. I did a lot of text-based poetry/writing on the glass of bus stop terminals. I used a kind of paint that has a catalyst/hardener in it so you can’t just scrape it off the glass as it binds to the glass surface. (This kind of paint was used on old cola bottles). All of these were just one liner texts like Japanese Zen koans. I also did some mural gang work - big pieces done by a crew - but it was never my design.

When I moved to Chicago I realized the stuff I had been putting down in my sketchbooks would make great street pieces. Over time the process has become more focused. I almost always paint on the ground as I walk around the piece. Since moving to the UK I have started using field line marker (the kind they use to draw lines on sidewalks and football fields.) Its perfect for doing flat work as it sprays down, plus it comes in 700ml cans and you can use it in the rain to paint on grass as well as concrete.

The pieces I am doing now are all freehand. No preparation. I love stencil work but personally it feels so confining. I want to be able to paint, not just print an image on a surface. I like the dance of the process through developing the lines and seeing a piece come into reality. I never pre-plan how a piece will look before I show up to a site. I just take some cans and see what happens. The pieces become very site specific that way. I don’t think my work has a ‘message’, but it comes from a very personal place. The abstract forms develop out of my experiences in transcendentalism. I see the work as a representation of my inner thoughts. The development of the imagery comes as a flowing experiential process.

I read that you moved around a lot in the USA, living in New York, Georgia, Kentucky, and Oregon. Why the constant motion? Do you finally feel settled in London?
When I was young I spent a lot of time exploring what was happening in the US. From age 18 on to 23 I didn’t stay in any city longer than a year, often moving after only a couple of months. I moved in wider and wider circles away from Michigan: first all over Michigan, then randomly around the states. NYC was a big stop (about a year) but then I finally hit Chicago, where I lived for about 11 years.

Eventually, though, I started to feel confined in Chicago. It’s a great city but I came to realize it’s easy to live there and get by. In the end, it wasn’t challenging me enough. So I gave up the huge studio I built and moved to London. The one upside of all the moving is that I have seen an amazing amount of live music performances, many legendary, due to the constant movement. A couple of times, the timing of my moving was calculated just so that I could see a band perform.

London is just another temporary space. I fantasize about settling someplace warm, Portugal or Spain. I figure London will last a few more years, but I would like to try getting out of the urban for a while. Someplace with trees and no winter.

Why did you relocate to London? What’s special about the art scene there?
I came to the EU on tour with the Exploding Star Orchestra doing live improvised video in the winter of 2007. I spent a month on the road and decided that I had to move to the EU. While I was here I came to the UK to work on a book and decided London was the place to be. Lots going on, a huge unknown expanse of street to paint on, plus the CCTV challenge. I got out of the US just before the financial crash, though it happened here as well.

The biggest difference between the EU/UK and the US is the level of art appreciation. People, normal everyday people, are into art. There is still the typical elitist art world, but the level of art appreciation here runs deep. The Banksy show in Bristol had block long lines all day the whole month it was open. In the States, Banksy wouldn’t get a museum retrospective; he would get arrested for destruction of property.

What prompted the show at Secret Project Robot? How did Brooklyn’s creative community differ from your London home base? What kind of feedback did you receive from the show?
Todd ‘Pendu’ Brooks is the guy who puts on the New York Eye and Ear Festival. He curated the show at Secret Project Robot during the last No Fun Festival. It was good timing because I got to see an amazing weekend of shows while I was in town. I am always up for a visit to Gotham. When I lived in NYC I hated it: too much pressure, not enough having a good time. This was around 1995. I did some nice things, got involved with a graffiti mural gang, and did the solo pieces on the glass bus stations. But I was constantly broke and never really into being there.

I tried to convince the graffiti group I was working with to do a live raid/bomb on the elevator of the Whitney Museum. We would do these pieces that were 6 3×3 ft sections of a grid. Each of us did the fill of our square then Julio (the leader) would seam it all together at the end. We could do a 6ft by 9 ft piece in about 2 minutes. We always did Julio’s work/designs though, which I wasn’t into.

So I planned and proposed this piece where we would go into the museum separately and all get in the elevator together and do the inside before we got to the top floor. Its a huge elevator and slow. I figured even if we got caught we could say it was ‘art’ and get out of it. But the guys didn’t go for it; some of them were on probation so they wouldn’t risk it. After that I kind of lost interest. Eventually, I went out west for about 4 months to San Fran and then Eugene, Oregon.

But when I lived in NYC Williamsburg was divided between the Latin Kings and the Hasidic. There was no art community at all. Things have changed. It’s a fun place with a lot of things happening, and it’s way more open and low key than NYC in the 90’s. The only shame about the visit was that I spent so much time in the gallery; I didn’t get a chance to go out and do some street work.

In addition to your visual work, you also produce music and collaborate with artists like Andrew Bird and Magik Markers. Compared to producing visual art, are the processes similar? Do you get a different kind of satisfaction with an audio project?
I have somehow managed to always be around music. It’s more of an accident than anything else. I became a record producer because I collect 16mm film and met Bob Koester (who also collects film), owner of the Jazz/Blues label Delmark.

Through Delmark, I produced records by Rob Mazurek, Josh Abrams, and Chicago Underground Trio. My first two records were by Kevin O’Donnell’s Quality Six, which featured Andrew Bird on vocals and violin. It’s a shame he gave up jazz; he is one hell of a jazz singer.

Before I made it to Chicago, I had somehow made friends with a bunch of people on the Michigan scene: John Olson from Wolf Eyes, Pete Nolan from the Magik Markers. The Michigan scene was just insane in the late 80’s/early 90’s. There were all kinds of music and shows with so many crazy bands.

I guess music is what kept me sane over the years. It’s the one constant. I can go anywhere in the world and the records remain the same. Mingus is still Mingus in Berlin, London, NYC, Tokyo, or Detroit.

This past June, you spearheaded the Equinox Festival, a self-proclaimed ‘festival of scientific illuminism.’ What was the experience like? Would you do it again?
It was a lot of work but in the end, it was worth all the pain and suffering. I wanted to create something that took esoteric ideas out to a broader audience. We had 15 lecturers, 12 films and 15 bands over three days, with everything relating to the ideas of transcendental discovery and mystical tradition. The highlight for me was lying on the floor the opening night as John Zorn, Z’EV and the guys from HATI performed in the centre of the crowd. Total immersion, that’s what it was supposed to be.

I am still uncertain if it will happen again next year. It may just be a singular occurrence. I am not sure how I can do it better and if I can’t make it better the next time around, it’s not worth doing. Time will tell.

What are you working on now? Where will you go next?
I always have too many things going on at once. I have a video performance coming up at the Foundry here in London on November 1st called “Visions of the Al Azif.” It’s based on the hallucinations/visions of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred from HP Lovecraft’s Necronomicon. There is rumor of an exhibition before the end of the year here in London. In the meantime, I am making films and wandering the streets at night looking for a nice patch of ground to paint on.

More at: raymondharmon.com

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