Unzipped

In Unzipped, Charley Harper portrayed a crayfish molting, when twice a year it splits its hard exoskeleton and emerges soft and vulnerable, exposed to predators such as bass, raccoons, herons, snakes, and fishermen who might use it as bait. Created in 1970 as a serigraph, the work reflects Harper's nature-oriented, bold, colorful, and often whimsical modernist style. Harper, born August 4, 1922, in Frenchton, West Virginia, was a Cincinnati-based American Modernist artist who studied at West Virginia Wesleyan College, drew lasting influence from his family farm upbringing, contrasted his work with the realism of John James Audubon, and drew inspiration from Cubism, Minimalism, Einsteinian physics, modern art, and science.

Buckhannon, West Virginia · United States