John Harris Sr., the founder of Harrisburg, lies buried in a small graveyard under a mulberry tree in Riverfront Park.
The Art Association of Harrisburg sits just up the block and across the street from Harris’ final resting place, providing inspiration to one city artist who also happens to be a gallery assistant at the association.
Six years ago, Bryan Molloy embarked on an ambitious artistic project dedicated to exploring one of the foundational stories of Harrisburg. The story involves Harris, groups of local Native Americans and, appropriately, a mulberry tree.
The result is the Harris Project, which evolved over the years into a six-foot-wide panoramic work of oil on canvas that shows one especially lousy day for Harris—the day he was tied to the tree by members of the Iroquois nation over a trading dispute. Molloy depicts Harris as being rescued by Susquehannock natives, which is one of the prevailing versions of the story.
History long has had an influence on Molloy, who grew up in Boston and graduated in 1999 with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
“They make a big deal about the wealth and power that they had [in Boston], but Harrisburg had more,” Molloy said. “And they don’t make a big deal about it here.”
With the Harris Project, Molloy does not so much depict a piece of Harrisburg’s history as he does explore—using 18th-century-style painting techniques—how a story vaults into history.
In the painting, Harris was modeled by one of his own descendants, Toronto-area resident Ed Sharp. Shaka Hudson, a Harrisburg native and Broadway veteran, modeled for the rescuing chief, as well as each Susquehannock native. The models wore handmade costumes, the construction of which contributed—along with the oil sketches and formulation of the overall composition—to the years of work the project required.
Molloy started painting the finished work only within the past year, and, though June, it’s on display at the Harrisburg City Government Center. Mayor Eric Papenfuse has recognized Molloy for his work on the project, and Sharp flew his family in from Canada and New Zealand to see it.
Six oil studies of details within the larger painting are exhibited alongside the main painting, including two of the rescuing chief, one of Harris, two of the Iroquois aggressors and one of a canoe. The costume worn by Hudson as the rescuing chief is also on display, featuring a wool cloak Molloy commissioned from Harrisburg tailor Bernard Ballard.
“I was always comparing it to the old colonial paintings in my head,” said Molly.
One of those paintings was William S. Reeder’s 1839 painting “An Attempt to Burn John Harris,” which depicts the same events Molloy renders in the Harris Project. As he finished it, “I found it looks even more like one of those old Colonial paintings than it would have if I had paid too much attention to the fine details.”
Molloy respected the work required to demonstrate that Harrisburg’s history is a worthy subject for an elaborate work of art.
“It took so much patience to create a drawing, to adhere so strictly to other styles, Colonial styles, and then to integrate the Dutch Masters style into it,” said Molloy. “It gives respect to all the traditions and symbolism in Pennsylvania that were part of the work.”
To provide viewers with a context for the art, Molloy created an audiobook read by Andy Taylor, a stadium announcer for the U.S. Open. The audiobook, available for purchase on Amazon, accompanies the painting in the manner of an audio tour one can choose to take of a museum exhibit.
Ultimately, Molloy said that he committed himself to the Harris Project not just out of fascination for the city’s past, but for where Harrisburg finds itself today.
“I didn’t intend to ‘make [Harrisburg] great again,’ but to show how great it actually is,” he said. “In times of trouble, with the bankruptcy and the corruption, it’s really important to see back to how amazing the history is.”
“The Harris Project” is on display in Harrisburg’s MLK City Government Center through June 30. The book, “Harris Project,” is available at www.amazon.com.
