ARTISTS IN PORTRAIT : Couple’s Work Blends Environment, Art

Their art is their life, most artists will attest. But how many can add that their art is also their home?

“Survival Piece No.9” is the title of an acre and a quarter of land off a dirt road east of Del Mar that nurtures--and is nurtured by--artists Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison.

Within its perimeter of young eucalyptus trees stands a thriving fruit and olive grove, planted on a water-efficient terraced slope. Vegetables previously grown on the land were so plentiful that the Harrisons ended up giving much of them away.

High on the property, overlooking a blanket of quiet, gentle hills, is the Harrisons’ house, where they start each day with a conversation in front of the fireplace.

“Our area really is our own invention,” Helen Harrison said. “There are other people who may deal with the environment, or nature, and there are others who do reclamation. There are other people who do all the kinds of things we do. But the kind of collective that we have made of it is very much our own.”

For the Harrisons, who share a professorship and a studio at UC San Diego, “Survival Piece No.9” epitomizes their values, methods and projects. It is the last in a series of survival pieces they began in the early 1970s, though the issue of survival continues to guide their work.

Braiding together ecological, sociological, scientific and political concerns, the Harrisons “take critical issues and find joyous solutions,” Newton said. Helen added that their aim is to put “the urban and natural environments in discourse.”

Discourse has been the essential ingredient in the Harrisons’ work since Helen, with a background in literature and the social sciences, and Newton, trained as a sculptor, started to collaborate 17 years ago. Now, each serves as the other’s motivator, editor and critic.

“Over time we have developed,” Helen said. “I became the artist and he became involved in all the other issues as well. So there has been a huge exchange between us. We have changed each other considerably.”

At work, Helen, 58, assumes a steady, consistent pace, while Newton, 55, is more intense. Her coolness and his fire meet on common conceptual ground, and their works, all co-signed, exhibit a seamless authorship.

“It’s very hard to tell where the initial ideas come from,” Helen said. “What we have developed is an artist that exists in the space between us, that is neither Newton nor me. And out of this common mind, most of the work springs.”

Their unity is so complete that Newton explained one project heavily seasoned with irony with the remark that “our tongue was firmly in our collective cheek.”

Their work, which takes the form of extended studies incorporating maps, diagrams, photographs and hand-written text, tends to be affirmative rather than critical.

A project for Pasadena proposes returning a concrete flood control system to its original condition as a natural wash.

On a photograph of the concrete channel, the Harrisons have written: “Knowing all the reasons for the incision in the land/does not heal it/But imagine making concrete stitches to close this incision/and adding a new skin of earth above/and redrawing the river bed across the land . . . .”

The Harrisons have forged a successful artistic career out of their sense of personal responsibility to the earth. Their joint curriculum vitae for just the last three years runs to 14 pages of exhibitions, lectures and articles. They count 17 projects currently under way. And, to their good fortune, they have maintained this pace and productivity since the beginning of their collaborative career.

Because of the nature of their work and their early recognition, they have never had to submit to what most artists consider a necessary evil--door-knocking, pavement-pounding promotion.

“We do not expose our work,” Helen said. “We have to wait for people to come to us. It never works if we have to reach out and say, ‘We would like to do such-and-such, are you interested?’ ”

“Our whole career is about falling over backwards into situations,” Newton added. “One project leads to another. The only thing we ever promise is to accept an invitation to go somewhere and think.”

As problem-solvers rather than object-makers, the Harrisons’ relation to the art world differs in most respects from that of mainstream artists. Museums, universities and magazines form the primary market for their large-scale installations, but they don’t depend on sales to fund their works.

“Our projects tend to pay for themselves,” said Helen. “They have to pay for themselves. We have put every bit of money that comes in into the work, very frankly. We have this nice theoretical ground that we should get paid a fee for the work, and we do, in general. But it tends to go back into the work.”

Their professorship at UCSD stabilizes their income, but teaching inevitably has an impact on their work.

“Sometimes it contributes, sometimes it distracts,” Newton said. “The price we pay is in the reduction of our work. The gain we get is that we don’t have to consider the marketplace as much as other artists do.”

Having settled far from that marketplace has certainly not impaired their international reputation. In fact, it may even have helped.

“There are too many artists for the amount of art demanded,” Newton said, “so there’s this fierce competition for the center. We found that we could deal with the center from the furthest point on the continent much better. You can’t be further from the center, if New York is the center, than 20 minutes from the Mexican border.”

“But also,” Helen interjected, “we’re really regional artists, though the region may change.”

Many of the Harrisons’ works have dealt with the region of southern California, which has become home to these two native New Yorkers.

“San Diego is very much home,” Helen said, ending on a sardonic note, “unless they totally destroy it with more growth to the point where we can’t even get home.”