Janet Ellen Morgan
Janet Ellen Morgan is an expressionist artist, working in landscape and figurative genres, with additional experience in book illustration and theatrical design.
Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on September 30, 1954, to Gladys & James Morgan, noted economist and member National Academy of Science, whose mother, Rose Ann Davis Morgan, was a WPA trained painter. She is married to painter Gregory Frux.
Move to New York City
After earning her MFA in 1979 she moved to New York City. She ran the poetry and small press department at the Gotham Book Mart. for most of the 1980s. From 1988-2006, while continuing to work as an artist she supported herself as Expressive Arts Therapist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, in the Adult Recreation Department, where she also edited a magazine of patient's art and writings, and worked on the annual Patient Art Show. She married artist Gregory Frux in 1990. They moved to Brooklyn in 1992.
Summary
Janet pursued her creative work with large watercolors, both figurative and landscape. She has had over 100 exhibitions, including shows at the National Museum of Art of Kyrgyzstan,[1] the Burning Man Festival, the Omega Institute's [2] Women and Power Conference and the Córdoba Museum in Alaska.[3] Janet Morgan has been artist-in-residence in Death Valley National Park, Weir Farm National History Site in Connecticut, and the Omega Institute in New York. She worked for 18 years as an Expressive Arts Therapist at Sloan Kettering with adult cancer patients, and is now a full-time artist. Recently Janet and husband Greg Frux were the subject of an article [4] focusing on their desert art.
Artistic Residences
Babayan Culture House, Ibrahimpasa, Cappadocia, Turkey: 2012
Death Valley National Park: 2005, 2006 and 2008 Death Valley Residency Ranger talk schedule
Weir Farm 2001 Weir Farm National Historic Site 2001
The Omega Institute 2003, 2007, 2008, and 2010, 2011 and 2012 The Omega Institute
Morgan's Supreme Beings: The God and Goddess Project
The God and Goddess series began in January 1988 and has steadily grown to nearly two hundred paintings. These large format (26" by 40") watercolor portraits of homemade and traditional deities celebrate aspects of the divine and of the human. Janet says of the series, "They are a way for us to see ourselves as sacred, and so to honor our own powers and our foibles. They can be serious, like The God of War, or irreverent like The Goddess of the Joys of Petty Thievery, or important ones for our own time like The God of Safe Sex or The Bee Goddess." Many writers and artists, including Judith Malina, founder of the Living Theater and poet Sheryl Saint Germain, have contributed to these works in order to flesh out these supreme beings and give them many voices.
Williamsburg Art and Historical Center's Sensual Abundance Show 2004 [6] season
Performance and Politics in the America Online Magazine - April 2008/Issue 5.1 [7]
Williamsburg Art and Historical Center's CROSSED DESTINIES A Tarot of the Artists 2005 [8]
Landscapes
"There are any number of artists who portray, with great veracity, the features of the landscapes around us. Janet is one of a very few who convey, with stirring luminosity, the vivid textures of our primal relationship with place and the wonders of those landscapes mirrored within us. " Rowland Russell, writer, ecologist[9]
Janet became inspired to paint landscapes first in the American Southwest by the sacred places of the Anasasi and the living sites of contemporary Native Americans. She realized that landscape painting could be as expressionists, interpretive and personal as any other kind of painting. *See influences. Janet Morgan has painted and drawn in Antarctica, Kyrgyzstan, Bolivia, Peru, Death Valley, Eastern Oregon, the Canadian Rockies, Utah and many other places in North America.
Her work has been shown or reproduced at the following places:
Whole Terrain Magazine Artists Space Theme Antarctica Page Brooklyn Arts Council Print Portfolio Yosemite Renaissance Exhibition Yosemite Auction Death Valley Journal
Belly Dance Paintings
Janet began to pursue belly dance in 1996, as an amateur dancer, choreographer and costume designer. This interest translated in a series of paintings exhibited at:
Tabla Rasa Gallery's Music to my Eyes show
Whole Terrain Issue 14 Whole Terrain Magazine Cover
Celebration Art
Janet worked with Earth Celebrations for the Lower East Side Garden Pageants in the past, and recently has been an artist in residence for the Hudson River Pageants in New York City. You can see what's involved in this short film: Interview in documentary on YouTube by Earth Celebrations on the Hudson River Pageant Workshops
Education
BFA Minneapolis College of Art and Design, studied with Kinji Akagawa Image of Kinji's Portrait by Janet Morgan Minneapolis Star Tribune and Siah Armajani
Junior year at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Eric Fischl and Mira Schor), MFA University of Wisconsin at Madison (Warrington Colescot). While at the University of Wisconsin Ms. Morgan studied fine press books with Walter Hamady.
Fine Art Book Illustration
Janet Morgan began to illustrate books while at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (all of the following are in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. The following is a list of her work.
Art and Adventure Publications
Welcome to Death Valley! A Guided Tour Through California's Death Valley National Park. A full color children's book, ages 6 – 10. Review, available here..
Perishable Press
Song of the Sly Mongoose, Poems by Arthur Brown (1981) Found in many library collections including the Evergreen State College, James F. Holly Rare Books Collection (Perishable Press). as well as the Stanford University Library
Rara Avis Press
Birds by Bruno Schultz (1979)is in many rare book collections including the Stanford University Library
Red Ozier Press
The sea & ourselves at Cape Ann by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1979) Ancient Song by Mark Glass (1980). The Tall Schooner : a poem by Salvatore Quasimodo (1980) Exhibition at Center for Book Arts
Black Mesa Press
Roses & thorns : nine love songs by Lucy Tinkcom (1981)
Subcutaneous Press
Trio : being a song for birds, hills, and man. By Janet Morgan (1979)
Cross Cultural Communications
Mask of Medusa, poems by Sheryl St. Germain (1987) Unfinished Sequence, by Edward Butscher (1981)
Perivale Press
Going Home by Sheryl St. Germain (1988)
Influences
References
- ↑ "Janet Morgan". Babelearte.net. Retrieved 2011-03-07.
- ↑ http://www.eomega.org/?gclid=CIzc0cPwo6cCFRVx5Qod_wypDw
- ↑ "Fish Follies - A Virtual Exhibit from The Cordova Historical Society and Museum". Cityofcordova.net. Retrieved 2011-03-07.
- ↑ http://www.californiadesertart.com/?p=646 an article
- ↑ Janet Morgan. "microcosm". Janetmorgan.net. Retrieved 2011-03-07.
- ↑ "Williamsburg Art and Historical Center: Events & Exhibits". Wahcenter.net. Retrieved 2011-03-07.
- ↑ "All Issues". Hemisphericinstitute.org. Retrieved 2011-03-07.
- ↑ http://www.wahcenter.net/exhibits/2005/crosseddestinies/ Tarot Show
- ↑ "Rowland S. Russell, Ph.D. - Writing". Ecorowland.com. Retrieved 2011-03-07.