JEFF MORRISStraight lines. Crooked lines. Horizon lines. Cracks and fissures. Lines that separate the mountains and sky and sea.
Lines are the subjects of Jeff Morris’ work. But not just lines. It’s the spaces outside and inbetween the lines, around the lines, their shapes and colors, where they start and stop – these are the real players in these pieces. Because as each line is magnified and manipulated and abstracted in form and in hue, so are the spaces that surround it, so is the meaning and our perception also changed. Light turns to dark, day to night, unmoving earth becomes ephemeral air – definition is redefined
And plastic, always plastic. For Morris the used plastic bag isn’t trash, it’s a bright exclamation mark punctuating a gray landscape. It’s “found” color. And it’s mimicking nature too. Like the spore traveling from the flower to its growing place in the earth, so too does the plastic bag travel from the super market, trash can, or arthritic hand, floating across the landscape until it lands on the barb of a rusted fence. But unlike the spore, which will grow then die, the plastic bag will remain on the fence, or in a weedy lot, or buried underground -- in our memories – forever, never fading, never disintegrating, always bright and colorful.
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Untitled and When Yes on N Becomes No on N
Remove all the words from a dictionary and what do you have? Blank pages, bound paper -- a fresh start. This is the approach Morris took to a series of banner flags. Hanging from buildings like stalactites, these flags traditionally have one purpose: to instantly grab our attention to sell us something, to lure us into a convenience store, car wash, mini-mall gym. But when the words are removed, when the color is stripped away and they no longer serve the purpose for which they were made, what are these flags? Morris suggests they are blank slates, “fresh starts,” to which we can apply our own colors, words, and meaning. On the creation of When Yes on N becomes No on N:
“I was a huge proponent of Proposition N in Oakland, where I live. I put a bunch of these election signs in my front yard. When the proposition failed, the message on these signs was useless. I wanted to remove the failure I felt when I looked at them, to be able to look at them in a different way – a new life.”
Drawings
Morris has always been attracted to tide charts not for what they are communicating – ebb and flood, wind direction, swell height -- but how they communicate it. “I’m fascinated by how all the colors [on tide charts] are assigned to a movement or a time of day, how there is meaning attached to each color,” he explains. “They make the abstract concrete, in graceful, simple way.” Morris sought to redefine both color and meaning in this series of color-pencil drawings. His goal was to remove the affiliation and meaning of the colors, and allow us to appreciate the tide chart on a different, aesthetic level. In doing so, the concrete is made abstract, again.
“Yesterday I came upon a plastic quart bottle of oil, run down by a car, with its contents exploded on the side of the building, flowering in an arc, an incredible pattern. You start looking at it, really looking at it, and all these different shapes and their permanence start to reveal themselves.”
JAMES NESTOR 2007
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