DG:  Could you talk about some of your inspirations? 

JM:  That’s sort of a tough one since I can’t remember not trying to create, draw, doodle, build with blocks - etc. At various points, I was obsessed with everyone from Picasso, Miro, Dali, Romedios Varo to Persian Miniatures and Eva Hesse.   Hieronymus Bosch was certainly a huge influence and still might be, but this work definitely started to grow after I fully discovered Paul Klee. 

Do you remember how you found out about some of these artists?  Growing up in New York, did you encounter some of that work in person?

I was raised by a single working mom in Queens – she was a registered nurse at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village -  but we definitely went to art museums. We also had something like an art encyclopedia - I think it was called “the world of art” - books on the ancient world and a few coffee table type art books. Someone turned me on to Bosch in high school, but I had clearly seen artists influenced by him along the way. A Black Sabbath Album has a Bruegel painting on it.

I learned more when I studied illustration at Pratt Institute (didn’t graduate) and I spent lots of time at the library. I often used the library, when I didn’t have a studio. 

Working in the library seems to make so much sense, if you consider the economic use of space and time.  Using a public resource as your workplace feels very egalitarian or optimistically democratic.   Did you meet a lot of people there, or were you basically left alone?  It seems like New York, and that Pierogi (gallery) scene of the late 90’s produced a lot of artists who worked on a table space, out of necessity.  

Yes, the small drawing format largely developed out of necessity. For years, I resented this and tried to do bigger, more ambitious works (I certainly have some bigger work) including assemblages - but they always posed huge problems. I did some of this work at The Art Students League under teachers like Richard Pousette-Dart and Bruce Dorfman. 

I met some interesting people, but I found a library where I could be left alone. The biggest temptation was to look at or read about other artists instead of developing my own work. The library had long tables, so I could look at things in groups. This is mostly how we decided to exhibit my first show on tables. 

I definitely knew or at least met a number of the “obsessive” Pierogi artists like James Sienna, Daniel Zeller and Martin Wilner. Lori Ellison was a very close friend, we talked almost every day. 

How do you know when a drawing is finished?

A good question - that probably relates to my love of Paul Klee.  In some ways he’s a major artist who mostly did minor works. Outside of a few works, he didn’t focus on making masterpieces. He reviewed and even rated his pieces, but he generally didn’t seem to obsess over them. 

It’s much more about the total, continuous drive to create than any single work. Joanne Greenbaum has really been a huge influence on not trying to be uptight and just move the invention ball forward.  Anyway - this might be a cop out. I agree with Roberta Smith’s view that my works sometimes don’t stand entirely on their own. I tend to see them as notes in an ongoing organic whole - that can be reformed and changed. 

Which is maybe why I felt a little strange trying to arrange them in this show.  It seemed like an endless process, and I was sort of an interloper.   You do talk about your more recent material installations as something you need to do in the space.   Can you talk about the relationship between your drawings and your mixed material arrangements?

Yes.  Many people seem intimidated or threatened by the open-ended nature of my work - like I should tell you exactly how everything should hang, what it means, etc. Honestly these are explorations. Doodle is always a high compliment. 

The installation/mixed media work is even more open ended, in that I like to keep and rearrange components and adapt them to new spaces and situations. Honestly, I’m not sure how those works might be sold. I want to explore photography. I’m also thrilled and excited with the recent trend towards “experience museums” like Meow Wolf and Otherworld outside Columbus, Ohio.  I would love to create some kind of “outsider art” styled immersive experience like that. 

But there are definitely huge connections between my drawings and installations. Most are put together with wire, like drawings in space. Transparency and translucency is another big connection, as well as the materials themselves, since many of my drawings included paint. 

Meow Wolf has definitely taken off, they are opening one up nearby, in Denver.  They are operating on a franchise model, in a very millennial and market friendly way.  I’m not sure if its ‘outsider’ so much as ‘roadside attraction.’  Our mutual friend has been making alternative exhibit spaces with her partner, first an outdoor clothesline in Brooklyn, and currently their front yard in Colorado Springs.  I think there’s always been an attraction for me to art that can relate to the art world, and also to people who don’t regularly look at art.  It’s also interesting when artists educate themselves by doing the legwork and visiting galleries for a period, instead of going right into an MFA program.

Yes, Meow Wolf is not an “outsider venue”, but I’m very interested in the business model of selling an experience to a huge audience instead of physical work to a tiny group of rich people.  I also love the accessibility and the breaking down of traditional barriers between high and low art. Call me crass - but I tend to gravitate towards art as something cool or moving to look at, hear, or experience. 

I certainly hope to inspire more artists to think outside the MFA/gallery/museum box. It’s sort of a return to the 19th Century, when artists toured with panorama paintings offering a larger than life experience almost like a circus act. That was a big money maker. I could really go on about this. 

How do you feel about how people respond to your work?  When writers try to categorize what you do, certain themes seem to come up.  Art critics have related your work to tantric art, Kabbalah, and Antonin Artaud.  Do you think that they are fair comparisons?

Totally fine with it. I actually love many of the things written about my work, which is probably influenced by everything. I want it to be open-ended and inclusive.  But I think the biggest influence on the total body of work is the previous work; like an ongoing doodle that started somewhere. It seems like most reviewers get the sensitivity, vulnerability and repressed sexuality. The drawings are definitely not meant to be perfect, as much as sensitive and open. 

That’s interesting.  I don’t know if it was the time of my life when I first saw your work (I was about 22 - maybe a time for vulnerability), but your early drawings really stuck with me.  Somehow we artists have to remain sensitive and open as we get older, don’t we?  It seems like you create a routine for yourself, that creates that space when you work.

It's important at any age, I guess, especially for an artist. I mostly like the reviews of my work that mentioned things like ecstasy and vulnerability. These works definitely developed at a time when I wanted or needed to feel happy, when my art seemed like the only good thing happening in my life. 

I don’t think I’m near that level- but I feel like I understand what drove artists like Adolf Wolfli and Martin Ramirez.  Klee is certainly a master of dedicated studio practice. 

Everyone is different- but I am definitely a “rhythm passer” that needs to work.

I looked up rhythm passer online, and it brought up quarterbacks.  I thought it had  something to do with passing the time. I often spend hours or days in the studio doing tight little repetitive actions, and to me it feels like a mantra.

Yes, I’m referring to a creature of habit-type quarterback that relies on timing, getting into a rhythm and gaining confidence through small successes.  I can’t sit on the bench all year and throw the 60-yard bomb like it seems like some artists can. 

Wolfli and Ramirez are often labeled with terms like ‘visionary’ or ‘outsider.’   Do you think that those terms are useful?   Are we moving to a place where that type of work can sit in a room at the MoMA with the “masters?”  (Maybe it already does, I don’t know).    But then Charlemagne Palestine, because he works with sound and video, avoids that label. 

In most cases, I don’t think the distinction between “self taught,” “visionary,” or “outsider” and other art is useful. The new MoMA rehang has blurred the line and given prominent placement to former outsiders like John Kane.  Judith Scott, an artist with down syndrome is now exhibited at MoMA (her work is incredible)

Can you talk about your experience opening a gallery in Pittsburgh?

Ugh, that’s a long story I’d rather not dwell on.  It had a lot to do with not being able to afford a secure, creative life in NYC, even when things seemed to be looking up in my career. Still, I strongly feel that artists need to take more initiative about changing the status quo - but, I’m certainly not a gallerist. 

Ok I won’t dwell on it.  I agree that it’s something that artists should try to do if they want to, to empower themselves and their group of peers.  But maybe don’t expect for it to last forever, because it’s really hard to sustain something like an artist-run space over the years.  But you began showing at an artist-run space, right?  

Yes, I never got anything on the wall, but my career definitely started at Pierogi, which was (still is) started and run by an artist. An artist saw my work who... yadda, yadda. 

I think these spaces of all types are vital. Pierogi had an amazing sense of community.  My Pittsburgh gallery attempted a flat file type model [similar to Pierogi’s]. 

I’m definitely proud that I tried to do something, but one also has to be honest about one’s talents and passions.  I just wasn’t driven and motivated to sell art or operate a business. Although I still have plenty of schemes to try and change the art world. That’s another long story. 

Do you ever just throw away a drawing that isn’t working?  It seems like these drawings always seem to work out, they are just so graceful. 

Um, very rarely. I find it very hard to toss anything, which can be a fault. Honestly, I’m a borderline hoarder (which might be why I had trouble doing large works).  I used to set aside lots of works to revisit later - often by using them as under drawings I covered with wax crayons or acrylic mediums. I have works started in 1990, finished in 2002. 

My goal with these particular (recent) drawings is to do about 1 a day without getting too anal or obsessive about them.  Klee reviewed his works and clearly liked some more than others, but it seems like he mostly avoided tedious revisions.  Really troubled works often remain unfinished. 

We haven't mentioned music yet, but you have said that it's an important theme in your work.  And the exhibit title “All the Mornings of the World” refers to a story about a musician.

I’ve never actually seen the film, but I fell in love with the soundtrack by the composer/ violinist depicted in the movie, Jean de Sainte-Colombe.  I’m definitely not an expert in music, but it’s a huge influence with parallels in my work.  Aside from his doodling genius, I think I was drawn to the “polyphonic” nature of Paul Klee’s works, which almost always involve a dynamic counterpoint between several melodies and one or more interlocking rhythms. 

It’s a big subject, but most of my works, especially the ones with multiple layers, tried to explore polyphony.  This exhibition title resonated on several levels - especially for a body of daily drawings exploring organic patterns and changes, which connected to a film about a great composer of polyphonic music. 

John Morris (b. 1964) was born in Queens, New York, and now lives in Pittsburg, PA. Morris has shown his work at Pierogi 2000, D’Amelio Terras, Anthony Meier Fine Arts, The National Academy Museum, Kohler Arts Center, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Mattress Factory. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum. Morris operated Digging Pitt art gallery from 2005 – 2008.