Arts & Culture

Updated 3.3.2014

Surrealism at Work

Artist Meredith James '04 shares three videos and additional photos of her work.

Meredith James created her 14 x 8 x 12-foot sculpture <i>Impossible House</i> with salvaged wood and windows.

A still photograph from the video <i>The Invention of Morel pages 89-91,</i> a composite of two videos that match shot for shot, one video of the room intact and another of the room as it is smashed. In the installation, the two videos would be projected simultaneously (with two different projectors) onto the same projection screen.

Another still from <i>The Invention of Morel pages 89-91.</i>

A third still from <i>The Invention of Morel pages 89-91.</i>

<i>Corridor,</i> a work from 2009, was created from dry-cleaning conveyors and vinyl. It is 15 x 10 x 7.5 feet in size.

<i>See Through Installation</i>

<i>A stand of roadside cholla against which small birds had been driven by the storm and there impaled</i> (2010)

<i>A stand of roadside cholla against which small birds had been driven by the storm and there impaled</i> (2010)

<i>See-Through</i> (8 x 7 x 9 feet) was created with salvaged wood and windows.

<i>Cuckoo 1 (Talking)</i> (2010)

The photographs above present additional images of work by artist Meredith James ’04, whose creations “show parallels between the world you imagine in your mind and the world we inhabit,” according to a Montage article in the November-December 2011 issue of Harvard Magazine. Distorting architectural space and playing with perceptions, James’s videos are inspired by the works of Surrealists such as Jean Cocteau, as well as by literary science-fiction novels. Watch three of her videos below: Day Shift, Door Sculpture, and Present Time.

Day Shift:

Door Sculpture:

Present Time:

Sub topics

You might also like

a crowd of people dancing in a street

Salsa Squared

Latin dancing fills the streets in Harvard Square

group of people with camera equipment above the fjords in Iceland

On the Margins

Filmmaker John Armstrong’s “outdoor adventures” find the human spirit.

A woman and a horse jump off a large platform into water

Pony Plunges

Scrapbooking a woman who rode horses into the sea

Most popular

scissors cutting a paper with Harvard shields on a dotted line

Harvard Layoffs Continue, with More to Come

In the wake of federal government actions, several Harvard schools and institutes are cutting costs.

Widener Library

Trump Administration Threatens Harvard’s Accreditation, Subpoenas Student Records

The federal government mounts pressure amid negotiations with Harvard.

A man and woman seated on a stage together, both holding microphones and looking out at the audience, which is outside the frame of the photo

Jodie Foster Honored at Radcliffe Day

The actress and director discussed her film career and her transformative time at Yale.

Explore More From Current Issue

Nicolo Maestas in a grey suit and wearing glasses sits with her arms on a table

John Harvard's Journal

Harvard Economist Nicole Maestas on Aging and Health Policy

The Harvard health economist not afraid to get in the weeds

Colorful glass bottles and nautical trinkets line a window shelf, with a ship in a bottle as the centerpiece.

Harvard Squared

Walter Wick’s I Spy Series

I Spy Creator Walter Wick at the Norman Rockwell Museum

David Leo Rice

David Leo Rice on 'The Berlin Wall'

David Leo Rice explores the strange, unseen forces shaping our world.