Morgan Ritter

Morgan Ritter
Artist & Poet
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→ substack
→ @raisin_consciousness
→ co-director, House of Art and Craft

I am an Oregon-based artist, writer, and mother, whose practice is guided by hypnagogic or dream-like states and child-like play. My experimental process results in sculpture, text, HTML web pages, drawing, and textiles. I work openly across materials and forms to explore perception and the unstable boundary between interior experience and shared cultural space.

The presentation and representation of my work may exist outside of formal conventions of gallery, studio, and slick web documentation. Exhibition and dissemination of my work happens in window displays, artist-books, sculpture gardens, on clothing, and often in artist-led non-commercial art spaces. Influences include the anti-establishment spirit of 1970’s Post-Minimalist sculpture, funk art, Surrealism, Institutional Critique, the vibrancy of Shaker Gift Drawings, and Feminist art.

Although materials in my work are often specific, my approach is not precious. Materials function as unhinged collaborators rather than inert matter. Sand mixed into hand-processed clay, eggshells combined with egg cartons, and other incidental detritus have comprised the substance of my sculptures. I am not interested in performing skill or mastery over them; instead, I am receptive to processes that are unpredictable, uncontainable, even ecstatic. At its core, my work processes embodiment and more broadly the capacity for objects to hold multiple experiences, energies, and meanings. my work has been exhibited at Noon Projects (LA), Artists Space (NY), Shanaynay (Paris), PICA, The Whitney Biennial 2017 (NY), a light bulb store, an orchard, MoMA (NY), and many other conventional and less conventional venues for experiencing art. I am the recipient of grants from Oregon Arts Commission and Foundation for Contemporary Art, among others. I have attended several residencies including Anderson Ranch and Ken Kesey’s Farm. I am the Co-Director of House of Art and Craft, and on the Art Collection Committee at the Oregon Jewish Museum. Her work has been featured in Art Forum, Art Practical, Art Viewer, e-flux, W Magazine & Vice.