Emily Harju

A Collection of Works by Emily Harju.

[emharju]

Wooden Cover Coptic Book, 2016.

[emharju]

Things Unsaid

Eyes shot straight ahead

relaxed, out of focus

in a state of forlorn hypnosis

thoughts melatonin

like the recently matured

brain waves of a child

dazed, no longer succinct   

just alive

looking ahead

barely noticing

the things unsaid

[emharju]

My first leather-bound book I've made. More to come!

[emharju]

Wire-Edge Book (2014)

by Emily Harju

[emharju]

Words After Love

Winter crisp and the brittleness of snow

In the dead of night, 

Street lights automatic,

You come over

Door opens; frigid air rushes in,

Shifting my evading sheets, I roll over

Clock reads 3:30

Your familiar figure enters, the scent of cedar

Failing to evade my short-term senses

Body resting next to me,

Breaths succinctly in sync with my own,

I awake to find you gone.

My heart which still loves, breaks. 

[emharju]

Photography by Emily Harju (http://emharju.tumblr.com/)

A quote by Sylvia Plath.

[emharju]

Collage. Eventually making a large-scale oil painting based off this.

[emharju]

Collage I made semi-recently.

[emharju]

Just Once

       Just once I knew what life was for.

               Those late summer fires,

                      that warmed our hearths.

                   As we drank our way to the stars,

         the grass cradled our young vessels.

 Our bodies ached,

      as we would succumb to our earthly desires.

           Limbs upon limbs,

              we swayed with the trees.

        The moon, our only witness.

  We awoke as the morning dew began to settle

       on our now aged faces,

             we sought the stars with the same curious wonder,

                      only to find them gone.

[emharju]

Barefoot Babies

Twenty-years-old, youthful face stricken, maturity forcefully sets in, remainder of innocence, reminder of growing up, depletes like my already tired eyes, the black-tarred sidewalk, yet chalk residue remains, from summers long ago, eight-years-old, when ignorance was bliss, those endless days, we rolled around in the deeply-rooted grass, skin with green leftovers, the sun caressing our fair faces, we run around, scraping our growing-pained knees, on what used to be the forgiving sidewalk, the sound of our mothers chanting our names, dinner time, we sprint, barefooted babies, echoing feet on the cement, the reflections of our shadows alongside, now, we relish for those days, all those many years ago, we reflect on where we’ve gone, where we’re going, our knees are toughened now, scarred and immune to further reckless scrapes, now, we lay in the grass, only to remember how soft it used to be, how the sun used to gently kiss our faces, now the sun, it’s much too glaring, we must retreat into the shade, and now, when our mothers call, it’s to rant rather than to chime, no longer barefooted babies, our feet are now covered, we no longer run with the same endless enthusiasm, instead, we run to the beat of other’s drums, for now, the real world is calling.

[emharju]

The breeze bewilders me

Yet my jealousy endures

For those more found

than my own self

more beauteous

 more derived 

than my own

yet at the end of the day

I know it is wit that ends battles

and not purely the physical means

in such a way

I inhale what is mine

Trying to be something more

poetic than myself.

[emharju]

Chess Set Renderings in Maya. (Fall, 2012)

[emharju]

I’m interested in encouraging people to stop, look, and think about their social environment through written-based art. I made these stencils, which embodied certain spoonerisms. This piece is meant to be contradictory and thought-provoking more than anything. I placed the following stencils throughout areas in downtown Ann Arbor.

Photography credit to Calvin Tuttle-Horn.

[emharju]

Mirror Image

a mere facade

of something so flawed

yet I still state

as if to bare

with who I am

and who I was

a few seconds in, I pause

and gaze at my present self

my very self

myself

[emharju]

Speaking wisdom

as only time can tell

A story of its own

that words can spell

I sit here and wait

for my experiences

to take action

becoming their own abstraction

evolving into dreams and hopes

the only way

I can sometimes cope.

[emharju]

"In Case of Pac-Man, Take Stairs" (2013)

While taking the course CFC II: Culture. As a partner assignment, Emi Halford and I were given a task to ‘solve’ a problem that’s presented in a space around Ann Arbor. We were both fascinated with the idea that people are often too focused on getting from place to place, that they don’t often enjoy the time getting there. We understood the ‘space’ of stairs to be an embodiment of this idea. Therefore, we made this space more ‘involving’ by replicating the game “Pac-man” onto these set of stairs found in the Art & Design building on North Campus.

[emharju]

"Reflection" (2011)