Carole Harmel was born on 1945 and is an American artist and photographer, who gained recognition for her provocative images of nudes in the 1970s and 1980s and still lifes combining photography with short narratives, wordplay and mixed media.
17 Facts About Carole Harmel
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Carole Harmel played a key role in the development of the pioneering women's cooperative in Chicago, Artemisia Gallery, as an early member and co-founder of its influential photography gallery.
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Carole Harmel's work has been featured extensively in the New Art Examiner, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Artforum, and Midwest Art, and is held in corporate and private collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Wellesley College, and the Illinois State Museum.
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Carole Harmel began college as an English literature major at Smith College, but gravitated to art and transferred to Antioch College in Ohio, for its freer atmosphere.
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Carole Harmel's work won a prize at the 1973 AIC "Chicago and Vicinity Show", appeared in Heresies, and drew both critical attention and controversy.
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In 1979, Carole Harmel began film studies at Northwestern University with professors Paddy Whannel, Stuart Kaminsky and Chuck Kleinhans, completing a PhD in 1982.
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Carole Harmel continues to work and live in Chicago, with her husband, artist Arthur Lerner.
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Carole Harmel quickly gained recognition for her nudes, which were described as provocative, compelling and disturbing in their suggestion and psychological acuity, and deft in the use of color, texture and composition.
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In 1984, Carole Harmel began creating still life series that retained a surrealist edge recalling Magritte and Duane Michals, but employed word and visual play, color, and narrative, reflecting her film studies experience.
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Carole Harmel worked with her husband, painter Arthur Lerner, on her "Facing Modigliani" series, to create portraits of Chicago artists which Lerner painted in the style of Modigliani over images that Harmel shot of each person.
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In "Chicago Odyssey", she reached back to her beginnings as an undergrad lit major to co-create What Weinstein called "boldly rollicking" works replete with pathos and wit, in which artists cast themselves as characters in Homer's classic and then worked into portraits Carole Harmel took of them.
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Carole Harmel followed with "Another Iliad", which invited artists to paint, draw and collage over photographs she took on the site of Troy.
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In 2018, Carole Harmel created another collaborative series, "A Clowder of Cats," in which her cat, Mica, "enters" the works of 22 Chicago artists.
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Carole Harmel's contributions included reviews on Andre Kertesz, Wynn Bullock, contemporaries Keith Smith, Jane Wenger, Joseph Jachna and Harold Allen, and major exhibits.
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Carole Harmel received the Distinguished Professor Award there in 1999 and served as Chairperson of Department of Art and Foreign Languages.
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Carole Harmel's work is held in numerous public and private collections, including those of: Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Illinois State Museum, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, State of Illinois Building, Taubman Museum of Art, Wellesley College, Kemper Insurance, Lake Shore Bank, Container Corporation, Muriel Newman, and Dennis Adrian.
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Carole Harmel has been awarded the Chicago Society of Artists' Prize, a Polavision Grant, an Illinois State Museum Purchase Prize, and an Illinois Arts Council Grant, among others.