Scott Morgan

Cathedral is a series of documented interventions in the natural world that explore the junction point between what is precious, what is ordinary and what is considered sacred in our modern human life.  Using the tools of the craftsmen of the renaissance; gold leaf, silver leaf, semi precious stones in new and unexpected ways, Cathedral opens up a dialog on these reference points of value and beauty.

A large boulder sitting on the threshold of the sea is hand covered in  milk and sugar, then gold leaf, and then photographed.  This ordinary boulder, sitting among many for millions of years, now with this small act is declared, rare, unique and somehow holy for the short period of time, usually less than a day, that it exists in this exalted state. A stand of Aspen trees, in a forgotten meadow high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico, is transformed from unnoticed random trees to an altarpiece. A stretch of wind swept rock or fallen tree trunk is covered in diamond like crystals. The crack of a volcanic rock in the Sonoran desert glows from within. They sit as they are found. Nothing special. Nothing moved or arranged.

These acts bring up classic questions; Can something exist without being perceived? If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound? If no one is around to see, hear, touch or smell the tree, how could it be said to exist?  What creates a sacred place?

Siren is a six channel video piece consisting of three monitors on each wall facing each other. On each monitor a film consisting of shots of an indigenous singer from a country on the edge of one of the great oceans continuously loops. Their faces fill the frame of their respective monitors. Each subject is singing a traditional song to the sea, a song of longing, of love, of loss, in a native language. On the opposite wall a singer from the opposite side of that ocean is singing. 

A young man from Okinawa, on the Pacific, sings in Japanese across the room to a woman standing on the shore of the Pacific in California singing in Spanish.  A middle aged man standing on the edge of the North Atlantic in Nova Scotia sings in Gaelic across the room to a middle aged African man singing in his native tongue.
The film cuts away to show the singers as small figures on the shore of the vast sea and then cuts back to a close up of their faces. 

Upon entering the room the viewer hears the voices of the people on the monitors as a low murmur, but is surrounded by the sound of the sea. Only by approaching the monitors, coming into the intimate space of each singer, can the viewer hear the song of each individual.

For the love of explores the individual and collective, the microscopic and the galatic using the base consituent of life.

For the love of is composed of fifty twenty-four inch square archive color prints, mounted on plexiglas and arranged in a tight grid ten feet high by twenty feet in length.   Each panel is an image of 10 ml of blood taken from one of fifty individuals, photographed in such a way to reveal the deep, multilayered transparency of the blood. Ten Buddhists, ten Christians, ten Muslims, ten Jews, and ten Hindus were selected for this work; mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, sisters, and brothers - a cross section of biology, ethnicity and human dynamics. The panels are randomly installed with no regard for group or relationships. The actual identity of each individual remains unknown.

Each photograph captures something highly personal and authentic; a unique glimpse of the literal river of life. Once each panel is positioned side by side, in its entirety, these individuals become a part of one powerful whole with no distinctions.  Blood is one of the most basic human elements, one that is shared by all people, no matter their race, sex, religion or culture.  Taking 50 different blood samples and displaying them together as one whole deconstructs the concept of individuality by blurring the difference between the personal and the universal. That which is shed in times of violence and war is also that which binds and gives life.  This installation deals with both life and death, as blood is at the immediate core of both. The beauty and richness of the color, on one hand invoke the rich drapery of altarpieces from the Italian renaissance or suggests the surfaces of planets, and on the other, the very potent corporeal presence of the most basic component of human life.

The Apostles are a series of black white portraits of the moons of various planetary bodies. These are the silent witnesses, orbiting in relative obscurity around the solar system, reflecting the light of the sun and their respective planets. Based in both the traditions of western landscape and intimate portrait, The Apostles blurs the lines between the two, producing at once a series of small precious objects, a landscape collection of huge rock and ice masses hurdling through vast space and, portraits of the unique personalities of these artifacts from the birth of the universe.

All the worlds urban centers at one time, were wild, untamed primordial landscapes.  Where Manhattan’s Times Square sits glowing, was once a meadow, a river, a grove of oak trees, downtown Tokyo, a marsh, a bamboo forest, a lake. Using the waterfall as metaphor, The Stations explores the anthropological and the spiritual, landscape and transcendence. The project is a surprisng and powerful reminder of that ancient primal context.
 The Stations project has two parts. The first is a series of large scale video installations in urban centers of waterfalls.  Shot in black and white, running backwards and in slow motion the films are projected onto walls and buildings forming a series of silent reflecting spots, compelling markers of what once was, in the midst of the rush of modern urban life.  
They can also be shown in a site specific gallery context with a slowed, deeply resonant sound track of the falls. The second part of the project is a series of limited edition archival pigment prints.

While You were Sleeping is a series of color images of the planets in our solar system that deal with the crosscurrent realities of modern existence and art practice. These images were found on the internet and exist on one hand in that perpetual world of activity, the endless river of digital noise and connection that never sleeps. And at the same time they are actual celestial bodies, massive spheres of fire, rock and ash, floating in a inconcievably vast, silent blackness; timeless, outside of all the moment to moment rush and whir of human life.

The Last Full Moon is on going series exploring the relationship of landscape, light and the corporal form.

In these works the artist takes the vastness of earth and the radiance of moon light and translates those through the use of his body into a new form.  Forgoing the stability of a tripod, he cradles the camera in his hands for long exposures, with the shutter wide open, thus allowing his breathing, flow of blood and muscle contractions to draw the landscape in light.

The Earth Sutras are literally a series of drawings executed with light and the subtle gravitational pull of the earth.  Line, density, luminosity, all determined by certain imposed artistic boundaries, are combined with this fundamental force of nature to produce works that are both iconic and bold yet subtle and transcendent.  These pieces are intended to be viewed, both as individual works and grouped in as a possible language or modern hieroglyphics whose meaning is just below the surface of the conscious mind.

Sutra in Sanskrit is derived from the verb √siv, meaning to sew. It literally means a rope or thread, and more metaphorically refers to an aphorism or line, rule, or formula. Through reciting or visualization this formula is believed to create a transformation within the mind, body or environment.  This form is used throughout ancient Buddhist and Vedic texts,

The Pilgrim Suite is a series of photographs documenting the artist at the literal landfall edge of the four great oceans; the Arctic, the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Indian. The project is a poetic and literal document of the artist's journey to the ends of the earth, to stand at the edge of the world. The artist is a small central figure in a vast intersection of land and sea. The pieces were conceived as triptychs with the individual panels not matching exactly creating a sense of the passage of time, increasing the isolation and silence at the center of each work. 

The light of the stars; ancient, fleeting, gone before you see it, the artifacts of time itself. These Ancient Bones is a series of photographs that were created without the translation of camera or lens. The subject is light.  Actually, light of the stars. These pieces were created using just film, exposed on a moonless night, in a remote part of the globe, far from the light of civilization. The film captures the subtle, yet all pervasive light of the stars at different time intervals, creating a range of color, luminosity and emotional response.

Gates of Heaven

 The Gates of Heaven photographs are more explosive, though shaped and controlled.  They describe symbolic portals where light is suspended in tension, restrained and bursting all at once.

In these photographs, light is pure, architectural, geometric, elegant, and most of all, alive.

The basic premise of the project was simple: Photograph the exact same image; same spot, same angle, same camera, same lens, same proportion of water and sky, for one hundred days. Positioned on a hilltop 800 ft. above the water, facing due south, without the familiar sunrise or sunset poetry of east and west, create a series of images that record the elegant yet minimal transformation of the threshold between two worlds, sea and sky, and the focused ritual of doing it one hundred times.

The images purposely contain no reference points. The elevated vantage point removes the waves and sand leaving the surface of the sea, which could be any large body of water. This strips the images of the specifics of place and sets them free to engage the viewer on many levels both real and imagined.

"The Shiva portfolio series can be thought of as meditations on the dance of light. In these photographs, light is pure, architectural, geometric, elegant, and most of all, alive.

As sight has always been connected to the metaphysical – i.e. seeing into the soul, and light from the beginning has been assumed by humans to emanate from a divine sphere, these photographs evoke similar.0000 spiritual realms.  Like the bright light that the dying claim to see at the far end of their tunnel vision, these images are characterized by a magical quality that is at once calming and pulsating, like a cosmic force that is beyond control yet also contained by simple forms.  

Perfectly balanced against a darkened background, the gyrating light of the Shiva images conduct like anxious energy columns, swirling like a dervish and caught by the camera in mid-transformation."

A.D Coleman, 1998

Two thousand individual hands were photographed around the world as the basis of One Life's Work. The piece is comprised of 4" x 6" prints, in both black and white and color, mounted to the gallery wall creating a powerful and intimate cross section of humanity. The palm is a very intimate part of the body as individual as a fingerprint. Some cultures believe that the map of one's past and future is contained within the lines and folds of the hand. The piece balances between the individual and the collective, between isolated human and the species as a whole. 

 The viewer walks into a darkened room with DVD projections filling each of the four walls.  Each wall has an image of a horizon framed by the surface of an ocean on the bottom and the sky above. Each wall is a video of a different ocean; the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic. The horizon lines of each wall meet so it appears as one continuous ocean surrounding the viewer. There is a subtle movement in the surfaces of the oceans and the quiet sound of waves in the distance.

The viewer is invited to go to the center of the room by a luminous circle on the floor. Once the viewer steps into the circle an overhead sensor triggers four other DVD projectors pointing at the ground. In a predetermined sequence at the base of each wall.  Film of water rushing up the sand of the respective beaches begins washing up to the outer edges of the circle almost touching the viewers feet. Over a 12 minute period the time of day shifts from dawn to mid day to dusk.

Eight to ten times a night you dream, whether you remember or not. Over two hundred thousand dreams in a lifetime. Every night you leave your body behind and live another life, in another world.

All Night Long consists of two hundred thousand pearl-headed pins, each 1 1/4 inches in length.  The pins are inserted into the actual wall of the site about 1/16 inch apart. The pins are placed in irregular waves, creating at viewing distance, what appears to be a subtle, iridescent cloud approximatley 10 feet high by 30 feet long.