Will You
Stay Here
For a Moment?
Denja Harris
October
24 - December 5Visions Museum of Textile Art
2825 Dewey Road, Suite 100
San Diego, CA 92106
@visionsmuseum
vmota.org
Where does our attention go? What do we choose to give our time to? What makes something worth returning to?
Will You Stay Here For a Moment? asks what it means to give something our time and attention when there’s always something else competing for it. Installed in a space meant for passing through, the exhibition is an invitation to linger, offering a brief interruption and asking what happens when we stay with a moment. Through layered yarn and dimensional works, I consider the impulse to move toward what’s next and the choice to stay.
WORKS
photography by @photoandstudio
photography by @photoandstudio
Threshold, 2025
Dead-stock wool, linen and acrylic yarns, thread, jute on cloth
41 x 65 in.
Dead-stock wool, linen and acrylic yarns, thread, jute on cloth
41 x 65 in.
Threshold responds to its own weight, letting gravity and installation determine the form instead of me. The openings are thresholds, leaving space for what becomes when you stay with uncertainty instead of rushing to resolve it.
Dead-stock and secondhand wool and acrylic yarns on cloth, wood, hardware, spray paint
40.5 x 48 in.; 140 in. installed
Wax and Wane is a repeated action that gradually changes through time. 287 curved lines accumulate until the surface starts to distort. This made me interested in the contradiction of repetition and how doing the same thing over and over will never actually produce the same result.
Deadstock and secondhand wool, linen and acrylic yarns on cloth, stained wood, c. 1970s worship chair
Variable dimensions
Soft Chair (Red) is a 1970s worship chair from a church in Vista, California. Its history made me think about creativity as an act of devotion in the plain sense. The time and attention given to making something, and what changes when an object made for use is remade as something to look at.
Dead-stock and secondhand wool, cotton, mohair and acrylic yarns on cloth, yarn and material waste, metal hardware, grommets
43 x 36 in.
A Record of Afters is my attempt at making time visible by measuring attention through deliberate making. Instead of measuring how much time disappeared into a screen,
I measured through evidence of the time I chose to create.
I performed the same actions over and over until they accumulated into something larger. The process required me to return even when it felt mundane or repetitive, which made me think about the difference between instant gratification and what feels worth devoting time to.
Log:
50 rings made and sewn together to make 25
15 used in final piece
118 calendar days
56 studio days
230 hours and 40 mins of labor