A little bit more about Harriet Hammel
Harriet (nee Freedman) went to St Martins School of Art for a pre-diploma year and then Ealing School of Art to do Graphic Design. In her final year, a visit to the Claes Oldenberg exhibition in London inspired her to make soft sculptures. While still a student, she made a soft Jabberwok for Peter Blake's Alice exhibition at the Waddington Galleries, in 1970.
In 1972, art dealer David Talbot Rice gave her a one-man-show at the Buckingham Gallery, in Old Bond Street. She called it Soft Living and furnished the gallery entirely with soft sculptures. It was very popular and led to many articles in the Press, magazines, TV appearances and commissions. During the 1970's she participated in many exhibitions in England as well as Paris and Helsinki. In 1977, she was a member of the team who made the huge inflatables for the Pink Floyd World Tour.
She thought her soft sculpturing days were over, until in 2006 she took part in the E17 Art Trail, in Walthamstow, where she lives. It was in its second year. She filled a shop window with her motorbike and other work, old and new. The following year, she made a site-specific installation, entitled KEBAB(ISH) for the same shop window: a life-size kebab shop completely made out of satin and polyester fibre stuffing. It drew in the crowds. This same year, she was selected to be a Member of the Society of Designer-Craftsmen.
She had a space in the Shop Within the Show at the Society's Mall Galleries exhibition in January 2008, and took her inspiration from the new smoking ban and the New Year's Resolutions season, to take an almost nostalgic look at smoking. She made soft burning cigarettes to put on now-redundant ashtrays, and soft Ricard ashtrays with burning fag and butt, to capture that French ambience without the fumes. The ladies of the Society, though, deemed the ashtray too un-pc to exhibit it on the desk!