Today we’d like to introduce you to Steve Morrison.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Steve. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’ve always known that art is central to my life, but that has expressed itself in different forms over time. As a young person, I was very quiet and loved having lots of time by myself, which gave me lots of time to look at art and work on art projects. I spent a lot of time learning to draw by going to a local taxidermy museum, and sketching bears, wildebeest, and crocodiles. I started out my art career as an illustrator, and have expanded into working with non-traditional materials in the fields of painting and animation.
Today, I create work that is exciting to me and that I feel I was born to make, I teach art at the lovely University of West Georgia, and I continue to work on commercial projects as an illustrator. It’s three careers in one. I’m also a father of a middle schooler and newborn twins, which is an additional job of its own!
Has it been a smooth road?
Transitioning from commercial to gallery art was a big leap. I’ve loved my fifteen years as a professional illustrator, and that work continues to be an important part of my career going forward.
But I reached a point where I felt led to make work that was more experimental and less obviously commercial. It’s harder to market bread dough video art than it is to market illustration and graphic design, but that’s where I felt I had to go. It’s certainly a difficult path–there are months where a lot is happening, and these can be followed months of very little. It’s been an incredibly rewarding experience to jump into the ocean and learn to swim. Commitment to the work keeps me going through thick and thin.
In the last couple of years, I’ve finally arrived in a place that feels like things mostly are in place and rolling along in a way that is exciting and fulfilling.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Steve Morrison story. Tell us more about the business.
I make paintings, animations, and sculptural installations. My work covers a range of areas, so what I’m known for depends on who you ask! But I would say my largest notoriety these days comes from my work with time-lapse bread dough animations.
People call me the bread dough guy. I’m interested in this unusual medium as something that is literally alive–it’s a kinetic sculpture which moves imperceptibly slow, it relates to bodies and time, and it’s ultimately a very familiar everyday substance. I love taking that familiarity, turning it inside out, and making it strange again.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Atlanta is a great place to start out as an artist! It’s a lovely community doing some phenomenal things. And I think the community is large and strong enough to support doing just about anything you want to as an artist, while small enough that you can know a lot of people and feel part of things without being totally lost.
I think Atlanta tends to be a little bit isolated from larger aesthetic conversations, and I notice a lot of artists moving away when they reach a certain level of success. I think a deeper audience of collectors committed to local artists would be a game-changer, and I know there are people working to make that happen, but it’s a tough problem to solve. In the meantime, Atlanta remains an exciting place to foster creativity and community.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.stevemorrisonart.com
- Email: stevemorrisonart@gmail.com
- Instagram: @stevemorrisonart
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/steve.morrison.188
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