Sep, 22, 2020
ArtistsCommunityPhxArtist Spotlight
Ann Morton: In Her Own Words
Born and based in Phoenix, Ann Morton uses fiber and textile techniques to examine social norms, interactions, and systems of which we are all a part—as bystanders, participants, victims, and perpetrators. Through sculptural objects and installations, she explores themes of entitlement, homogenization, marginalization, and human obsolescence.
In addition to works that reflect her personal handwork, however, Morton also orchestrates public projects that call for collaboration between herself and community participants. These projects, she says, are meant to harness the power in the act of making and engaging—together. Her 2013 project Ground Cover, for example, was a public art action commissioned by the City of Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture and funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Our Town Grant. The project engaged more than 600 volunteers from 22 U.S. states and Canada who made 300 blankets consisting of 28 squares, with each square forming a “pixel” in a giant overall image of desert flowers. The work was installed in a vacant lot in downtown Phoenix, and afterward, the 300 blankets were given to individuals experiencing homelessness through 11 service agencies. Ground Cover was awarded the Crescordia Award at the 2014 Arizona Forward Environmental Excellence Awards and was selected “best of show” in the 2015 Surface Design Association international exhibition, Materialities.
In 2019, Morton, who is represented by Lisa Sette Gallery, was named the 2019 Arlene and Morton Scult Artist Award recipient by Phoenix Art Museum. As part of the award, Morton’s work, including her next public art action—The Violet Protest—will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Museum in 2021.
Here’s Ann Morton, in her own words, discussing her journey to becoming a working artist, the historical and social significance of fibers and textiles, and her next big collaborative work.
“Fiber arts and textiles have such a deep connection to community engagement, social issues, and feminist tradition. I think about the hundreds of years of gatherings that quilting bees and knitting circles have provided for women to make useful and artful objects and to also just talk and share their joys and concerns over family and community.”
Ann Morton standing in front of the ReThanks project, 2017. Photo credit: Bill Timmerman.
PhxArt: When did you know you wanted to an artist? What was your first inspiration?
Ann Morton: My dad was an architect and VP at Lescher & Mahoney in Phoenix, in addition to being a fisherman and woodworker. My mother was a teacher, writer, seamstress, and all-around ready volunteer. Both of them influenced me in different ways, but I’ve always been drawn to a creative life.
My first inspiration to be a maker came in kindergarten when I was 5. My class was listening to the symphonic fairytale of Peter and the Wolf by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. Each kid was assigned to make a hand puppet for one of the characters in the story (I got the grandpa). I was so intrigued by how the people and animals were portrayed by the sound and character of the music and the instruments. It was during the process of making that puppet that I knew I wanted to make creative things.
Later, every Sunday after church, we would stop at Baskin-Robbins for ice cream. To see them now, they are pretty cheesy, but I was so inspired by the posters they would put up that depicted each new flavor. I was drawn to the different styles of type and how they evoked the personalities of each illustrated flavor character.
I also played the bassoon in grade school and high school. (I was highly influenced by the grandpa in Peter and the Wolf!) My parents encouraged and supported many of my hare-brained creative projects, like making high-school homecoming floats in our backyard, creating tree forts, sewing my own unconventional clothes, my endless obsession with macramé, and countless other schemes that are far too numerous to detail here.
Ann Morton, Trespasses, 2020. Vintage Morton family embroidery sampler, new embroidery. Photo credit: Bill Timmerman. This cloth was most likely a lesson in embroidery created by my mother for me. I vaguely remember embroidering this Lord’s Prayer, but it is also likely that my mother finished it for me. Now it’s my turn to finish this work to modify this solemn prayer with another reality that many of us that have recited this verse since childhood must accept and address.
PhxArt: Have you always been a working artist?
Morton: Before securing my MFA with an emphasis in fibers at Arizona State University in 2012, I practiced as a graphic designer for more than 35 years. I was principal at two firms—Hubbard and Hubbard Design (H & H) and Thinking Caps. The latter business is still operated by my former business partner, Julie Wolf.
I started out in print design and branding at H & H, where we also published The Arizona Portfolio, a “pre-Internet” directory of creative commercial talent based in Arizona, including designers, photographers and illustrators. The portfolio was distributed all over the United States to bring work to creatives here in the state. Later, at Thinking Caps, we specialized in signage and environmental graphics as well as providing print design and brand development. I was actually the principal-in-charge of the signage package for the first Phoenix Art Museum renovation with Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. I also worked on the facility and interpretive signage for Steele Indian School Park, the Phoenix Zoo, North Mountain Visitor’s Center, and the Sky Harbor Rental Car Facility, to name just a few places. I was additionally a long-time contributor to the Children’s Museum of Phoenix (CMoP), serving on the original exhibit development committee before the Monroe School facility opened. I designed the Museum’s logo they use today, their facility signage, and the exhibit Room for Under Threes. There are several areas that have a bit of my mark on them at CMoP.
So, my practice as an individual artist came later in life for me. Through a series of events kicked off by September 11, 2001, followed by spending some significant time in South Africa immersed in learning about apartheid and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I became dissatisfied and uncomfortable with how I was “spending my creative capital.” In 2006, I left my partnership at Thinking Caps—jumped off the cliff, really—and returned to ASU’s School of Art. Something drew me to art as a way for me to creatively advocate. I secured my master’s degree at age 58. The practice of fibers was certainly my emphasis, but at some point in my graduate career, I just knew that something was absent from the “soul” of my art practice. I was still not fulfilling my promise to use art as a tool for advocacy until I enrolled (somewhat by accident) in a course titled “Art and Community.” I eventually came to see the unique connection between the practice of fiber arts and the practice of socially engaged art.
Ann Morton, Blue MAGA, 2020. Official Donald J. Trump Make America Great Again Hat – Red Red Cap/Red, new embroidery (blue). Photo credit: Bill Timmerman. Courtesy of Lisa Sette Gallery.
PhxArt: So fiber is the medium you most work in then. What is the significance of fiber and textiles for you?
Morton: Yes, my work is most always “fiber”-based, or in support of textile work. “Fibers” or “textiles” can mean a lot of things based on the threads and strings you use to the techniques— such as basketry, sewing, weaving, knitting, crochet, or embroidery—you employ either sculpturally or in 2D. But I don’t really focus on any one technique; rather, I choose the technique that supports the concept of the piece at hand. In addition, very important to my practice is a combination of my own handwork and the work of many hands. A significant aspect of my work employs socially engaged projects that reach beyond my studio.
Fiber arts and textiles have such a deep connection to community engagement, social issues, and feminist tradition. I think about the hundreds of years of gatherings that quilting bees and knitting circles have provided for women to make useful and artful objects and to also just talk and share their joys and concerns over family and community. Artists such as Judy Chicago, Louise Bourgeois, and others have employed textiles within their art precisely because of its ties to the feminine experience.
There are such rich historical, social, and political underpinnings connected to textiles. Take, for example, the Silk Road, which was one of the earliest conduits for culture and trade between the east and the west with silk being the most prized commodity, or the story of Cochineal red dye, which was discovered by the Spanish during their conquest of the New World and used as a source of great wealth for Spain for hundreds of years. Many cultures, through most every era, have used textiles and clothing adornment to signal social hierarchies. The American use of slave labor to feed the cotton mills during Britain’s Industrial Revolution led to the creation of a social system that has allowed the U.S. to become a world economic powerhouse. Then there’s the history of marginalized textile workers (mostly women), a structure that has fueled and continues to fuel textile and clothing-supply chains even today. Textiles are at once ubiquitous and deeply significant to the human story throughout the world.
For me, because of this rich and complicated history, textiles is the only medium through which I am moved to express myself in my own work, and is a magnificent organizing tool to employ in the social engagement work that I orchestrate within my practice.
PhxArt: Who are your greatest artistic influences?
Morton: I will surely leave someone out of this list because I’ve been influenced by so many artists and creatives, but here are the ones who immediately come to mind.
My early inspirations were Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenberg, Rube Goldberg, Norman Rockwell, and Walt Disney. I’ve also been influenced by graphic designers Woody Pirtle, Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, Kit Hinrichs, Paul Rand, Herb Lubalin, and Seymour Chwast. For contemporary artists, I would say El Anatsui, Alighiero e Boetti, Ai Wei Wei, Annette Messager, Annie Albers, Ruth Asawa, Marina Abramović, Sonya Clark, Tara Donovan, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Francis Alys, Suzanne Lacy, Santiago Sierra, Superflex, Postcommodity, Anne Wilson, Andy Goldsworthy, Ann Hamilton, Banksy, Barbara Kruger, Cat Mazza, Nick Cave, Sheila Hicks, Gee’s Bend Quilters, and Julianne Swartz.
PhxArt: In addition to working as an artist, you also teach. Can you tell us about that experience?
Morton: During my graduate years, I taught ArtCore classes and Fiber One classes at ASU. I later continued to teach additional classes in the School of Art as well as the class “Professional Practices for Artists and Designers” for the Herberger Institute and Textiles Survey in the fashion-design program. I’ve also taught core art classes at Paradise Valley Community College for 6 years, and now, every spring semester, I teach my first love at Mesa Community College in the class “Textiles One (Fiber One).”
Ann Morton, Violet Protest composite, 2020. Makers (top to bottom, left to right): Heather Kirschner – Mesa, AZ; Cheryl Hopper – Washington, PA; Azra Kearns – Phoenix, AZ; Doerte Weber – San Antonio, TX; Carol Sanger – Phoenix, AZ; Mary Logue – Golden Valley, MN; Katie Leinweber – Scottsdale, AZ; Candace Wilkinson – Phoenix, AZ; Hannah Allen – State College, PA; Tané Clark – Tempe, AZ; Wendy Raisanen – Phoenix, AZ; Bonnie Scott – Salem, VA; Maxene Harlow – Clarksdale, MS; Tara Ritacco – Carlsbad, CA; Nancy Nakamoto – Torrence, CA; Kitty Spangler – Pittsburgh, PA; Cheryl Goodberg – Marana, AZ; Maureen Craddock – N. Massapequa, NY; Audrey Good – Mesa, AZ (VP logo, Ann Morton).
PhxArt: What is something you’re currently working on that we can expect to see from you next?
Morton: My latest public-engagement project, The Violet Protest, is my current focus. It calls for collaboration with makers across the United States, who are invited to create 8” x 8” textile squares using any fiber technique, while combining equal parts of red and blue. The color violet symbolizes the literal combination of red and blue, long held as symbols of our nation’s main political ideologies. Using these squares, I’ll create a large-scale installation that will be on view at Phoenix Art Museum in 2021 as part of a solo exhibition of my work. After that, the goal is to send the handmade textile squares to every member of the 117th U.S. Congress in late 2021 in support of core values rather than any specific political or social issue. This physical message will serve as an expansive visual expression demonstrating that if we, as individuals and neighbors living in the United States, are willing to come together, so then must our elected officials. To date, all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Canada are represented by nearly 1,300 makers. I have received more than 10,000 squares so far, with that figure increasing every day.
Also, in my studio work, I’ve been considering the roots of my own personal racism—invisible, insidious, and seemingly innocent cues that I’ve experienced in my own upbringing. Not surprisingly, I’ve turned to my family’s heirloom textiles and unearthed some pieces on which I’ve overlaid embroidered messages that I hope convey the confusion mixed with the misguided cues many of us grew up experiencing. Trespasses and US|THEM are two examples of those types of work.
Ann Morton, US | THEM, 2020. Vintage Morton family tablecloth, acrylic paint, new embroidery. Photo credit: Bill Timmerman. Many times, for a summer meal of hamburger tacos, my mother would use this tablecloth on our dining room table. We thought nothing of the American-made references to Mexican stereotypes depicted on this cloth as we ate our American version of “Mexican food”. We thought nothing.
PhxArt: Do you have any upcoming exhibitions that you’d like our audiences to know about?
Morton: I’ll be showing work at Lisa Sette Gallery as part of the exhibition Blue, on view now through January 2, 2021. Viewings will be by appointment only. Then from December 18, 2020 through March 28, 2021, I have a solo exhibition, History Repeats, at Mesa Contemporary Art Museum. And of course, there’s the upcoming exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum in 2021 as part of the Scult Award I received in 2019.
See more
To discover more work by Ann Morton, who is represented by Lisa Sette Gallery, visit www.annmortonaz.com and follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
To learn more about and participate in The Violet Protest, visit www.violetprotest.com and check out the project’s pages on Instagram, Facebook, and Ravelry.
#CreativeQuarantine
We’re curious how creatives are navigating the time of coronavirus. Ann Morton shares what’s giving her life as a creative during quarantine.
Morton: I’ve been doing lots of research regarding the racial inequities that have once again been laid bare, this time as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd and other young Black people at the hands of police. I’ve read or am reading Caste by Isabel Wilkerson; White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo; The Nickel Boys and Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead; Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe; Beloved by Toni Morrison; and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Also, thanks to Phoenix Art Museum, I’ve read American Gods by Neil Gaiman and The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. I’ve listened twice to the podcast series Seeing White/Scene on Radio, in addition to the 1619 podcast by The New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. I’ve attended a number of Zoom sessions with Mass Liberation, entitled “Do Black Lives Matter to White Women?,” and through Instagram, I’m researching BIPOC dyers, spinners and makers.
That COVID-19 and George Floyd’s murder would happen was, of course, unknown when I conceived of and initiated The Violet Protest. So, besides managing the thousands of sign-ups and incoming squares, one thing that has developed as part of the project is an email newsletter that all the Violet Protesters receive each month. I have a unique and unexpected opportunity to reach out to makers across the U.S. so that we may live through these events together and share how they’ve affected us. I’ve also been virtually visiting with a number of groups in many locations to talk about The Violet Protest, something that would not have happened before the pandemic and the age of Zoom! I’ve been able to speak face to face with makers in Northfield, MN; Dallas; Kansas City, KS; Pittsburgh; Savannah; Bloomington, IL; and New York City, as well as a number of local groups. I’m so grateful for this connection. The depth of experience that is resulting from The Violet Protest project is something that could not have been predicted and will, in the end, reflect a very special energy from everyone that has contributed to the project.
Besides that, I hike with my husband, my daughter, and our dogs most every morning in the desert. It is a treasure that we’ve really enjoyed throughout these days.