Harrell Fletcher

            Harrell’s work is all about the community and portraying the personalities and stories of the people living in that community. In the Garage Sale series, he was able to do this by collecting items from different garage sales and putting them into his gallery. Each item contained a tag on them explaining the story behind the item from the previous owner. The story tag was a way for the people looking at the item to be able to get to know something about the person who owned that item. Having all these different items from garage sales with their stories showed the different cultures, lives, and personalities of the different members of the community. At the end of the gallery, Harrell made the gallery a garage sale by letting people buy the items. This connected the people of the community because with the item you got the story tag and knew the meaning and history behind what you were buying making it seem more valuable than a garage sale item.

            Harrell’s main idea behind the Garage Sale Series was to make art accessible to everyone. He achieved that buy using ordinary items we see every day and wouldn’t care about and giving them a special meaning behind them. It also showed that not all art is the fancy expensive paintings that we all see in museums. This is a reflection of community arts because he did it for the people of the community to portray the different lifestyles and personalities inside that community just by taking simple items from their garage sales.