Erin Morrison, “Black Palm (no. 1)”, 2015, Ink and Wax on Hydrocal, 35.5 x 37.5
Erin Morrison is a 2014 graduate of UCLA’s MFA program, and has exhibited with Samuel Freeman gallery in Culver City. She grew up in Arkansas and received her BFA from Memphis College of Art. She previously lived in New York and Seattle, relocating to Los Angeles in 2011. Here, she teaches and maintains a studio practice.
Her work considers both the domestic and the institutional conditions of painting, combining the visual language of pattern common to textile design alongside heavy gestures associated with modernist painting. Spanning the processes of printmaking, painting, ceramic, and quilting, her work is linked to considerations of the reproducible graphic as well as the meditative act of creating a singular, unique object.
Made of Hydrocal (a cross between concrete and plaster), Morrison’s biggest pieces are more than 7 feet tall and 4 feet wide. Set in solid wood frames, each leans against the main gallery’s walls. The surfaces of her works are where the details reside. Individual stitches, woven fabrics, palm fronds and air bubbles can be seen. Each is the result of Morrison’s laborious process: gather fabrics, sew a quilt, lay it flat, build a mold, pour in Hydrocal, let it dry, tear out the quilt and then begin painting the cast slab.